you found me under Lēʻahi (i can do anything now!)

The time I got torn in the reef because I was chasing someone. Waking up and seeing that I am no longer alone and I can do anything.

We were supposed to surf Tonggs, the small, slope-y, safe, boring-but-sometimes-decent break.

I shimmied to secret beach, across the ledge and the fenced backyards, my sister’s shortboard under my arm. That was when you could still sit underneath the beach’s apartment complex, its bottom shaped like a Jenga tower about to tumble. The gap has since been filled in with concrete.

I could see his eyes, the color of the early morning sky, all the way from across the beach. He said my board was perfect, smiled when I kept my t-shirt on (“I don’t like actual rashguards,” I say, he doesn’t care), and pointed out how it clung to my skin, that he could still see the outline of my bikini.

Then out we went, and everything changed.

He is slightly in front of me, his six-foot-three frame slicing through the water. The break is so far, my arms are wobbling, I can’t keep up! I watch the droplets stream through the rivets of his back, his muscles honed by the ocean and copper-toned skin colored by the island summer. I am mad that I’m wishing I could touch him here in the daylight for once and ask him, “When? Next? Me and you, when will it be US?”

“Here’s the break!” he snaps me back to reality.

I turn. He’s not facing towards Tonggs—he’s pointing to Suicide’s, the nasty, speedy, ornery left-hand. It’s not a barrel, but it is aggressively steep and loud. I watch and listen to the wave fall, then suck itself back in, revealing the jagged reef below like a grinning shark.

“I thought we were surfing Tonggs?” I said. I add a notch in my mind: another moment in which what we said and what we’re actually DOING become two mismatched puzzle pieces. My wants distorted by his. His edges refusing to accommodate my own. My hope, my bargaining: can we make something together, please?

He keeps paddling.

“Nah! Sui’s is about to die. Let’s catch it! That other wave is a little slow for what I’m feeling.”

I pause and realize how far into the water I am sitting with this shortboard. I think back to my buoyant mid-size in my garage back home. Tonggs is sloping, rolling gently and quietly. I point this out, but he cuts me off.

“That’s what that short-board is for, isn’t it? An Arakawa, right? Send it!”

He sits up, turns to me. This is the face he shows me when he wants me to be quiet, when he wants me to do it his way—before he closes the gate, after he takes the first drag of the spliff, when he’s turning off the bedroom light, hungry, bored, ready. His teeth, huge and so white, are as blinding as the empty, dying coral beneath us. His eyes are greedily blue, feeding off the water, the sky around us. I am silent.

Then he reaches for my hand, grazing it, not touching me,

but splashing me, flinging little dots of water onto my face,

attaching his invisible thread,

before turning away, paddling, and

pulling me along.

I will not or cannot send it at first, I’m not sure which is more true because I’m so terrified of falling into the reef. By the grace (or humor) of whatever gods were watching, I finally do catch something, and it feels like the board is being ripped from my body.

Mindlessly, amazingly, I find enough composure to pop up. I am barreling, my heart racing—I’ve never flown like this before. I crouch, knowing I need to turn faster, harder, but I’ve never cut back on my backhand side, not with the stakes like this. If I do not turn NOW, the wave will slingshot me across the scabby, indifferent reef.

I look for help, but I don’t know where he went. I catch him: he is throwing spray, again and again, then, in a haughty display of prowess, flies himself into a safe exit, right before the reef.

I panic and see my future laid before me: I am going to wipe out. I am going to be grated by the reef. The last thing I think is: “PLEASE not my face, I don’t have dental insurance!”

I manage to fall RIGHT before the reef. Luckily, the wave is not as heavy as it looks, and I can roll my way to the surface, diagonally, to deeper waters. In the whitewater, I hear a scolding voice: the voice of a disappointed parent who wants better for you. I rise to the surface to see its source: Lēʻahi looming over the Gold Coast condos, peering down at me.

I look down and see my ankle and shin leaking streams of blood into the water. My shirt is twisted to the side. I run my fingers along my left hip, butt. Also grated. I am ashamed, furious, little, and grateful that it’s not worse.

“I’m sorry!” I whisper to Lēʻahi. To myself. There is no response, not even the sound of his voice.

Everything is salty and stinging and blurry, and my chest is heavy, pulling me to the ocean floor.

And he keeps going

sending spray into the Hawaiian sky

before finding me crying under Lēʻahi’s gentle, prodding gaze

attaching his threads anyway

and pulling me back into the rip tide he was, never asking if I could swim or even surf, or even if I could breathe.

________________________

I can do anything these days.

I felt shitty when I woke up, so I wore a dark warm-blue tank top into Chinatown. I drank a delicious flat white while I wrote this (and fretted about love, money, Max), then I got to give someone my pen! He was writing with his left hand in a Moleskine and had an accent I did not recognize. I don’t know how much ink was left, but I hope it brought him good thoughts.

I walked around, dewy, and my hair looking like bronze, then I caught my reflection and thought, “This is exactly how I feel inside!”

Then I left, and then I asked for what I needed to know from the rest of the world. I don’t know if I was understood, but I know I let my heart speak, so there were no lumps in my throat.

And, yet, I cried all night and this morning, tumbled down the ladder of, “Wow to wish and WANT is so tender! I have so much love to give! Why does this feel like a liability?”

When I opened my eyes and rose from the Earth, I was not alone. There were the faces and voices of women who reminded me that I was held and I can do it. I am holding everything, both on my own and together. When I seek to LOVE, then I am loved. This is not something I should change about myself.

I thought of the little heartstrings being pulled today,

then I remembered the time I was found under Le’ahi, when I was lost.

But now I can do anything. I am no longer alone.