these days, the sea floods my mind. my eyes shut, and in their awakening, i rise from tumultuous waves. gripping to the edges of a blue foam board. deliberately ignoring the burns on my stomach, i slide back on the top of the board. the salt grinding the sensitive flesh feels like a small bargain for spiritual alchemy. spending hours in a literary trance; absorbed whole heartedly to reading and studying the waters. following my instinct, i try to catch the bottom pulse of a moving body. paddling, racing to match the energy, keeping my chin to the board, and once the fruits of my labour came to fruition-the bottom of the board lifts behind me. In the splits of time, i raise my chin away from the board, my hands underneath my chest, lifting evenly while sliding my legs to my arms, like a contorted yogi. Birthing a miracle. a new perspective. a flash of all the years spent looking into the abyss. every second spent sitting on the sand, every ocean, and every sea. yearning for the fears and miracles behind the sun and the foreign void of a vast space. i stood, blissfully gliding, roaring towards the shoreline. in this moment, i became; every setting sun, every night sky, every folding wave, and every moonlit waters. I became the fears and miracles of the abyss. no longer wondering behind these long lost dreamscapes, but fearing ever going back to the life i strolled through. for i gave the sea my irritated belly, and she made me free.

Transactional love Love has veered away from its divinity. Its become “earthly” and transactional. Before going on a new years eve run, an older immigrant delivery man, rushed inside to grab a food order he misdelivered to the wrong address. It was 11 pm, exactly one hour before new years. We exchanged a smile, and he expressed a minor sigh of light hearted despair in his mistake. This was a reminder that there are people who work, while the world celebrates. He spun around the back of his car to enter the driving seat, where I then noticed, his wife accompanying him during his delivery. I watched, and quickly started my run. Reflecting on the existence of love in a shared struggle. The plethora or perpetual metamorphosis of love. As the children of immigrants, we’ve witnessed the downfal of sacrificial love, yet we still crave it. All other forms of transactional love feel shallow. But the ministry of presence, “through thick and thin” seems to be the purest type of love to us in the end.