Benjamin Abel lives in Coastal North Carolina. Reader. Writer. Student. Teacher.

Author’s note: “I wrote this after years of trying to figure out how to describe watching rain drops strike the ocean surface, from beneath the waves”

Drop

A world erupts from the heavens, cast down from its waft through veins of invisible.

The never perfect rondure is tugged oblong. It is the ancient call of the body below. It yearns for reconciliation.

Arcadia’s assurance has been rent fallow by the common brine.

The shark’s oozy breath has returned. The mollusk’s dance is given new stage.

The air becomes less cloudy, down here between the sea recently departed and the welcoming one below. The choice of where to land isn’t considered. Home is home, after all, no matter where you are.

The unremarking expanse opens—it peels back its sloshy skin—to receive itself. The slate sky devolves into a Green Room, refuge for the prodigal self that never strayed.

There was never a homecoming; leave was never taken.

You are not a bird finding your branch, the ocean reminds. You never flew away.

[image: Rain Storm Underwater | Jordan Rogers]
[Benjamin Abel photo credit | Suzanne Opton]