My tears were salty, but so was the air, and I couldn’t distinguish the difference between the two. The shimmering of the moonlight on the ocean’s surface made the water sparkle more than the stars. As I looked out across the vast expanse of sea, I couldn’t help but feel it staring back at me. Not with judgment or hostility, but with an understanding. There was something so maternal, so feminine about the way the waves moved like lips, pursing and crashing as they had a million times before. I listened intently as if to make out the sounds the water had mimed, but my own thoughts were too loud to make any sense of the noise. My mind was flooded with the brutality of the push and pull between the tides and the sand. Even still, I stared ahead. I felt a presence behind me on the sand that I refused to turn around and face, the presence of a land curated by man. Its masculine manner lurked, waiting for me to pay it mind.  I knew eventually, I would have to face it, and that inevitable conflict kept me from enjoying the peace of the water ahead. As long as this presence is behind me, I am never alone. Not a single woman lives without its company.

I’d been accosted by a man earlier in the day.  I’d taken my nephew out for ice cream on the long, beautiful boardwalk overlooking the beach. My brother, father, and the scorching sun followed closely behind me. I wore typical clothing for the blazing weather, shorts and a tank top. He’d taken notice of me when I was standing in line. I felt his eyes burning into my skin, and despite the sensation, I ignored it willfully. My nephew and I bought our ice cream, and he ate his furiously. Still feeling the man’s gaze on me, I didn’t dare lick the sugary substance now dripping down my hands. Even still, he approached me. My father and my brother guided me away as the man harassed me, asking intrusive questions and commenting crudely about my appearance. My nephew absorbed it, the young sponge he is. And I was left humiliated. 

This is why I made my way out onto the beach later in the night, in desperate need of solitude and escape after the hot sun lowered and the cool moon rose. 

As I sat atop the shore, I realized that the waves were not speaking, but chanting. In my ears, from the sea, I heard siren screams, the drowned out cries emanating from the unexplored ocean of women, the vast and bottomless body of women, the ripple of women throughout generations; and I too sang that tragic song. I was one of many in the choir. 

As I sat there with sand in my shorts and tears on my face, I prayed for a tsunami. One strong enough to annihilate the nauseating feeling of feminine flux coursing through my veins. A tidal wave big enough to drown out every mother’s son who’d made me feel inferior. I wanted them to feel the wrath of a wave too strong to survive. 

In an instant, the wind picked up, and sand began to circle around me. Grain upon grain fell atop my skin like bugs crawling against my body. Every time I swiped the specks away, more mustered towards me. Even so, I didn’t move a muscle. In that moment, I wished desperately that my flesh which sat upon the sand was anything but corporeal. Silently, I begged the water for help. I wanted nothing more than to be washed of that feeling. My patience grew thinner as the shore drew closer, and I waited anxiously for the tide to approach me. 

The current grew increasingly aggressive as the draft in the air picked up, blowing rougher with every gust. No longer could I hold back my anger and frustration. It poured out of my eyes, and I heaved with each breath as if it would be my last. The world grew blurrier through my drowning gaze. 

My tears crashed down onto the sand, and though the water retreated, through my cries, the land where I sat became the shore. I stared into the reflective abyss and realized I need not wait for the water to arrive. With my salty tears and siren sobs, I am the volatile sea. 

It was at this moment that the rapid flux ceased. The world went quiet, the tides paused, the night sky stopped blinking, and the wind finally sat still. From the top of my head to the tip of my toes, I was air. The sea and the sky met the sand beneath me, and for the first time, I felt tranquil. I watched the waves gracefully fall and marveled at the way the sea elegantly danced with the shore. My vision was sharp, and nothing but what was ahead of me seemed to matter. 

I thought briefly about the man who’d embarrassed me earlier, the one who reminded me that, to some, I am nothing more than a body. Something to look at, to comment on, to touch, to conquer. I realized then that the sea, too, is a body, one where thousands of boats float atop it, and millions of men have sunk below it. No man, not in their wildest dreams, could ever conquer the sea.