litlinks 2025

Sunkiss’d

by Ryan Lindsay, Dickson College

I saw the celestial scatter of sinking sunlight from the scales in the seafoam as the horizon hit the hanging fin before me; she brought peace to my terrified brain in that confusing and beautiful moment. I saw a cloud drifting through the endless square blue like it had nothing to do, nowhere to go; and no elsewhere it would rather be. I saw the distant beach wrapping around and out into the water, spray hitting the rocks of the point and fighting that eternal struggle between two things that cannot be together; neither allowed to leave nor yield. I saw the ocean beneath me and every truth it had ever hidden from me; as it devoured the ship from which I was to be the only survivor. I saw my hands reaching out, forward, hoping, touching…

I felt held by the grip of water older than I could conceive or count. I felt my stolen man’s clothes heavy and dragging like the weight of every decision that led me to a woman’s life on water. I felt the light splash of cool water on my parched lips. I felt love.

I heard my breathing; it was all around me, rising and hitching and loud and building. I heard the slap of waves, and that crested fin, as the world struggled and pushed and pulled and never settled. I heard a calming shhhh that bled into a warm laugh as it encircled me.

I smelt the burning of the salt from the world below I could not survive. I smelt her hair and the bittersweet hint that lingered on my cheek and through my hands.

I tasted a curiosity of stars crashing to earth, searching, wondering, coming, leaving, changing, knowing, hoping, saving, kissing, and being.

I took all of every small truth in so I could never forget this moment, and so I could be this overwhelmed again in the future…if I ever got rescued, or could ever be believed.