Beach Day
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The Poem
Beach Day
They come every Sunday.The showing up —the reliable unremarkable extraordinary factof women who decided this morning belongs to themand the water and each other,and keep deciding it every week regardless.
They appear in a pack.They are not pack animals.Pack animals move by fear.These women move by choice —they chose each otherthe way you choose the thing that makes you more yourself.Not less. Not smaller. More.
They move by choice
Their bodies are strong.Strong in the way that has nothing to do with the magazine —strong in the way of womenwho have held things for a long timeand kept holdingand the holding made them this.
Their constitution is stronger still.It brought them back every Sundaywhen the Sundays were hard,when the water was cold,when showing up required everything —and they came anywaybecause the others would be thereand the others being therewas the whole reason and the whole reward.
The sun is there to greet them.The waves are there to test them.The water doesn’t care who you are outside it —what you held, what the week took —in the water you are simply a body meeting a waveand the passing of the test is getting back upwhich is also Sundaywhich is also why they come.
The waves are there to test them
The sand will warm them after.The sand holds heat longer than you expect —and when you come out of the testand lie down in the warmth that was waiting —that is community doing what community does:holding the warmth until you need it,giving it freely,asking only that you come back next Sundayand hold it for someone else.
They are the holders of empathy.The ones who hold what the world keeps dropping.Who show up not just for the water but for each other —for the knowledge that you are not the only one carrying this,not the only one who needs the Sunday waterand the warm sand after.
They come every Sunday.The sun is there. The waves are there.The sand is warm and waiting.
And they are there —strong bodies, stronger constitution,arriving at the water together —because together is the whole point
and Sunday is when they prove it.