The sun had just immersed itself in that beautiful golden rainbow water in the distance. She came out, this beautiful creature, out of the ocean. She walked towards me. I remember it. I could almost see her, but not quite. But she was there, I think—or almost there.
She was barely true, almost real. I could tell she was there because of the soft shimmer on the outline of her body. The light of the sun, indirect and gentle, almost as if saying goodbye, would reflect on her surface––small glimmers of dew telling me of a hair, a curve, a breast, maybe a mouth.
She was almost there. Barely there. But the likeness of her being was unmistakable. I could feel it in my skin. It would tickle me. It would make me burst with a small gentle smile. It would make herself known when I took a whiff of air into me, and she smelled like the ocean. She smelled like the sand. She smelled like the sunset. And there she whispered in my ear.
She told me the story of the doll made of salt who would sit by the ocean as I sat by the ocean, waiting for the water to come close to her, almost kiss her, and go back; come back and go back; and one day it came too close and it kissed her on her feet. The oceanic water touched the feet of this doll who sat just as I sat. But her love and yearning for the ocean was so great that just one kiss of the ocean begun to dissolve the doll of salt. In her love for the kiss, all of her dissolved and she became the ocean.
When she told me this story, I asked:
-“So, what happened to the girl made of salt?”
-“She became the ocean” she said.
-“But, aren’t you the ocean?” I asked.
-“Yes” she said.
-“So, do you remember being the girl made of salt?”
-“I was never a girl made of salt,” she said. “I’ve always been the ocean, and I will always be the ocean.”
