Zanzibar

makes me happy. Right down to each strand of my hair.

2 days ago I swam over a mile in a sea warm as bathwater. The exhilaration I felt in my body is hard to describe. A deep sensory conviction that I am a child of the Indian Ocean, that no element of it will ever harm me. Illusory, of course. I've been stung by jellyfish, gashed by coral and rocks, caught unawares by rogue currents, in this sea. But still. That moment when the first cool water swirls up from below, and I know I'm off the continental shelf, into the unknown. The merging of every shade of blue, aquamarine, turquoise, green, constantly shifting and recombining. The memories surfacing in my cells:

This was the first sea I ever swam in. This will be the one I come back to when I'm ready to die.