Today, the nineteenth of May, at three thirty in the afternoon, I took my bike and went for a ride. I was not sure where to go, so I just followed the roads, to see where they would take me. I had not ridden my bike for a while. I enjoyed myself, pedalling, travelling on paths I had and had not travelled on before. My subconscious made me go to places I knew, yet somehow they were different: a greener oval, a quieter park, a denser bush.
I was approaching the ocean. I really did not know where exactly my mind and legs were taking me, not until I recognised the rugged and eroded faces of cliffs, standing with the flat ocean at their feet. Then I understood, and I realised it was where I wanted to go. So I pedaled faster, not giving up halfway up steep slopes, and faster, even though my breath was becoming irregular due to a racing heartbeat.
I got there in the end. Parked my bike and walked down the wooden stairs until my worn old shoes were stepping in sand.
The beach was calm, there was nobody there, and the only sound of life came from the inconsistent breaking of waves.
You know what I did next.
I sat. Where we had sat, that day, facing the vast ocean, exchanging a dozen of words. Where you had lied down completely and slept like a little child. Where I had built a volcano out of sand, while singing to myself. There had been two kids running and laughing. I had observed them from my spot on the sand, my spot next to you.
Do you remember those two kids? The smell of the sea? The brightness of the sun? Do you remember that day at all?
After a couple of minutes spent staring into space, and remembering moments spent with you, I climbed back up the stairs, unlocked the chain of my bike and headed back home.
- Eliza.
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