the quiet scrape of coral on the tide turning, just enough to make me look down, and then it was there, that sudden, impossible unfolding in the deep, a tapestry woven right out of the dark water itself, not missed because I wasn't looking for it, just PRESENT. It wasn't that I needed proof of anything beyond what my bones already knew, but sometimes the ocean just insists on showing you its secrets, like a breath held then released in a rush, filling every crevice inside me with the simple fact of seeing what's truly there, and it wasn't just my eyes, but my very core, the marrow in my limbs, remembering that sensation, the one that tastes like exactly where I am, that feeling that still catches in my throat sometimes when I remember Ohio, how could I have ever thought anything else was real, how could I have lived so long without this wild, improbable astonishment running through my veins, this absolute, undeniable flood.