offerings

There is a version of me that never left.

She is still there, somewhere between the fish market and the farm stand, sandy and salt-dried, riding in the back of a car that smells like sunscreen and wet dog. She knows when high tide is without checking. She knows which beach has the best waves and which one is better at dusk. She knows to bring a sweater even in August because the wind turns without warning.

I have been measuring every place I have ever lived against that version of me.

My house, Duna, is layered, every summer pressed into the walls, every family that came and went leaving something behind. The same rituals, passed down without ceremony. Someone always knows where my flip flops are. Someone always forgets the sunscreen. Cherry pits thrown out the window on the way to the beach. Watermelon rinds rolled down the hill. Dog fur floating in the August air.

I have brought people here. That is its own kind of ritual, the offering of it, the saying you have to see this. I brought first loves, young loves, great loves. I loved watching Truro do its work on people. 

I have taken salty naps in beds I shared with all of them. Sunburned and heavy-limbed, the sound of the screen door, the smell of the water still on our skin. 

They are all gone now too. Not dead, just gone the way summers go. Seasonal, in the end. The rentals that arrive in July and leave before Labor Day. 

This is what it teaches you, if you let it: things end. The water gets cold. The families grow and shrink around the same tables. The people you love become people you loved, and the place holds all of it anyway, the first time and the last time and every summer in between.

There is a beach I keep returning to even when I am nowhere near it.

I have left pieces of myself on those dunes. First love, great love, loss. The water the same every time.

I still bring people here. I still say you have to see this.