August and Everything After

by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski

Some people are only meant to be together for a short time and a specific purpose.”

Anyway, I was more interested in the pills than her. That was when I was more interested in pills than anything or anyone around me. I did a lot of stuff I wasn’t proud of, including stealing cash from my parents and crashing real estate open houses and searching peoples’ medicine cabinets to get high.”

The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.

“The ocean changes every day. Tomorrow morning you can walk out here and the surf will look totally different. Sometimes the waves are soft and rolling, other times they’re fierce and unforgiving. The winds and the tides are forever reforming and reshaping the landscape. We hear that saying all the time, ‘Every day is a new day.’ But with the ocean, you can see it. It has a way of making you believe the slate really has been wiped clean.”

People come together for different reasons at different times. It doesn’t mean you’re destined to stay together forever. But if you’re lucky, you’ll leave each other in a better place.