Salt on the Tongue

The memory of winter is not in the eyes, but in the sharp, metallic bite of cold air against the back of the throat. It is the feeling of wool damp with sea mist, clinging to the skin like a second, heavier layer of self. I remember standing by the water’s edge when the world was silent, save for the rhythmic, liquid slap of waves against stone. There is a specific scent to the dark—a mixture of wet pavement, distant woodsmoke, and the briny, ancient breath of the tide. It is a heavy, velvet sensation that settles into the marrow of your bones, grounding you while the sky above seems to fracture into a thousand burning embers. We are always standing between two worlds, aren’t we? One foot in the warmth of what we know, and one reaching out into the vast, shivering unknown. Does the body ever truly stop shivering when it remembers the dark?

Orhan Aksel has captured this feeling in his work titled Inter-continental Fireworks. The way the light spills across the water feels like the very salt I remember on my skin. Does this image stir a memory of the cold for you?