On days I feel lost in this world, I always return to the beach. On my way there I noticed something resembling an umbrella leaning against the bus stop: a wooden stick, just standing there casually as though it’s a perfectly normal place for it to be, waiting for me. “A stick?” you say. Yes, I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I have come to appreciate the value of branches and secondly, it was a particularly nice one, mind you – weathered driftwood curved in the shape of a sword. I brought my treasure with me to the seaside. There I breathed in the fresh night air as the last of the sunset lingered fiercely red above the mystical, dark water. Skipping barefoot through the thundering waves, finding as always that when you can reach out and touch the horizon, everything falls into place, I came upon orange roses that someone had left there for me to find. I stopped picking flowers years ago, once I learned that loving something means letting it live, but to receive such an unexpected gift filled up the empty spaces in my heart.
