that time we went to the ocean

It was a story sparsely told by a friend at a time when I had curled in on myself like a bear under the onslaught of winter, eager to sleep through the cold that surrounded me. It contained both diagnosis and prescription.

Of the time when, as a child, newly arrived with her family from China, they decided to see the sea, and drove to the Pacific. In just a few lines she painted her wide eyed small self rushing to the edge of the water, taking in the expanse, shouting to the waves, asking her father: “Is it the biggest thing in the world?”

And she told me of her father, catching up to her racing feet, placing his arms around her small frame. “Almost,” he said, as they stared out together across the wide ocean. “Only the heart is bigger than this.”