a small, water-worn piece of coral, no bigger than my thumb, settled into my palm , still cool from the tide, and for a split second, it was just the texture, the weight, a simple thing, before it clicked, the way my own words had settled in the air just yesterday when that person asked what i 'do', and it wasn't the old rehearsed answer, not the one that used to tighten my chest just to think about, but a new one, so simple and true it almost startled me, like i was hearing it for the first time myself, and that little surprise, that little ripple that ran down my spine, it was the feeling of the 'unrecognizable, but finally real' settling even deeper into my actual flesh and bone, a knowing that vibrates from my fingertips all the way to my ankles as i walk this shore every single with cosmo splashing ahead, and it’s a strange, fierce grace to finally become unrecognizable to the person you once fought so hard to be, a lightness that doesn’t float away but grounds you even harder into the actual ground, the kind of rooting that lets your breath feel like it has no ceiling, no edge, just open air and sky and the taste of salt on your tongue.