/ Cradle

You could hear more than the ocean, you could hear children riding broomstick seahorses, channeling their imagination through the waves, leaving your ears damp with saltwater spray. This is why it is so difficult to find them along the shore, they with no intention of living quietly. The intensity and volume of their existence could hardly be contained.

There was a time when I myself would have found it difficult to avoid exploring the ocean, were I invincible and the sight was close enough to be all but an invitation, and these waters empty into the sound, and the sound is deep and full of mystery. There was a time when I would have put the water between my ears and the cries for dinner time, and there was a time when there was no consequence for a long, solitary adventure. The ocean seemed so very close.

Her seizures are nearer together now, and postictal follows her in wider, wider circles, sometimes we put a bowl of water in her arc, but she splashes through, and then leaves wet paw prints around the couch and under the table, and we take turns following, making sure there is nothing sharp in her path, which will not be recharted.

I imagine she is at the bottom of the ocean, looking for some ancient cradle, because it is so awfully tiring, trying get through these last stages. Sometimes she returns, and we come into the house, and there are saltwater tracks throughout, as though she were young, and chasing seahorses through kelp beds and up coral reefs. She is exhausted. She has been walking and walking.

No wonder, we find it so hard to return from our delusions of grandeur, they are the endorphin rich dalliances that test our loyalty to heaven. Sometimes, she stops for a moment to rest, but then gets up on unsteady legs, and, always clockwise, like a baby from the north, like a sailor set out for the new world, she starts her circles again. She sees the landscape in so few colors, if at all, because she is blind, now, for the most part. We call out warnings, but she is deaf. She can only recognize us by our scent, and we must be very close, must stand in the way of her forward progress. It makes us feel like we are holding on too long.

If maybe, for a moment, she might remember that we took her from her siblings and her mother, and placed her in a shoe box, how tiny she was, she might stop walking in circles, out towards the ocean, maybe wonder if her brothers and sisters were taken quite so far from the sea, if they are still out there. She might reject us as she prepares her return, but then she seems to come through the fog, the heaving of her chest slows, and she lies at our feet, as though she is the one who is grateful.

We are preparing for all these departures with no excessive fanfare, but simply holding our ears to our pillows, as we turn away each night, dreaming in unsteady waves like rivers to the sound.