The Weight of the Shore

My father’s coat still hangs in the hallway, a heavy wool ghost that smells of cedar and the damp air of a winter that ended years ago. When I touch the sleeve, I am not looking for warmth; I am looking for the specific resistance of his weight, the way the fabric held the shape of his shoulders long after he stopped wearing it. We spend our lives trying to anchor ourselves to places that are inherently fluid. We stand on the edge of the water and believe the land is solid, forgetting that the shore is merely a negotiation between what stays and what is constantly being pulled away. We leave footprints in the sand, desperate to prove we were here, even as the tide prepares to erase the evidence of our passage. If the earth is always shifting beneath us, how do we learn to carry the things that have already slipped through our fingers?

Mirka Krivankova has captured this quiet tension in her beautiful image titled Seafarer. She reminds us that even in the most anchored of places, there is a constant, rhythmic departure. Does the water hold more of us than the land ever could?