What’s it like to miss something? A long for something irreplaceable. 

Simply put: void consumes you, it’s painful, it’s lonely, and it’s suffocating.

It was a while back, I had driven to a place I find is a home away from home. Music had flooded every square inch of my car with its dominance, but was powerless against my thoughts that thundered louder. Usually in company of its beating rhythm narrating my solo drives, I felt lonelier than ever. Its pulse turned to a heartbeat, one that was gone in my life. 

I tasted sharp salt and snot framing my frowned upper lip as I licked them. I didn’t dare wipe away what was now sagging down my face, but instead let it travel further. My tears had turned acid against my skin, searing black painted lines in their tracks. And in contrast to the dark stains now coating my cheeks, my knuckles gripped hard at the steering wheel going stark white. Both hues now painted my sorrowful world with their lack of deadpan color. The gloomy sky followed in suit with my tears. Shedding its icy wrath, coinciding with mine. As my tires traced along the water soaked road, I trailed the ocean’s edges in search of its rough torrent to drown my lonely thinking. 

The walk across the sand had cushioned my every step, wrapping my feet with intentional comfort, but the ocean’s contents had offered something more remedying. I hauled my toes out of the sand’s rescuing grasp, then dipped them in an icy white wash. Alone I stood, facing yellow comfort or a sapphire challenge, but I refused to tread back into the sand’s hold. 

With ease, the ocean’s spateing embrace plucked my shivering body into its wicked-like arms. The current’s waiting fingers dragging me under its waves until I heard nothing, and was numb to its bitter chill and the hole in my heart. As I peaked above its liquid roof, temporary relief coated my lungs collecting deep breaths. And despite my drowned thoughts, and the numbing frost of the sea, it had replicated my longing in a different kind. You see, the ocean was a consuming void that had combatted my own. Painful with chill. Lonely while I drifted in solitary. And suffocating.