Hole In The Hedgerow

One day Sally went down to the seashore to find seashells. She had always loved the shore. Maybe because it was a transitional place- an in-between place caught between two distinct worlds. Unable to decide where it belonged or what it even was. A feeling of indecision that Sally could relate with.
            And she loved the tides endless flow. Its dynamic way of ceaseless ebbing and flowing, becoming and unbecoming as the waves build themselves up- in vain- only to be destroyed by their own very ambitions. Crushed by the weight of their own desire to reach the shoreline. On the shore they collapse, stretch and reach along the sand, as if only to kiss the tips of Sally’s toes.
            “What a struggle”, Sally thought to herself as she watched the wave’s endless birth, death, and rebirth. The waves traveled a thousand miles or more just to be washed up on this sand.
            The thought of distance brought Sally’s eyes to the horizon. That distant point that our eyes often become drawn to when one visits the beach. We strain our eyes until our line of sight flies off the curvature of the earth, and lifts off into the endless space yonder. With the thought of “beyond” dragging on and on in our minds. The thought of “one day” tearing at our hearts.
            Sally watched the moon slowly make contact with the horizon. Its anti-climactic fall into nothingness. The moon’s everlasting fall towards the earth, though never actually being allowed to fall. The two- Earth and Moon- forever apart. Sally often felt sorry for the moon, because she felt as if she could relate to it.  She could now almost feel its gravitational force let go as it buried its face behind the Earth. If not spiritually than physically as its hold on the sea slowly ceased, and the tide began to bury her feet deeper into the sand with each increasingly aspiring wave.
            As the retreating waves washed over her feet, it buried her heels deeper and deeper. It was as if the very earth that Sally lived upon longed for her to stay put where she was as it gripped on to her and attempted to suck her into the ground. As if it sensed her thoughts, the shore yearned to keep her here forever. But she could feel the moon’s final rays of light tug on her heart strings. It was calling to her, “come along, and see what lies beyond”.
            A blinking light in her periphery stole away her attention to the sky. She watched as an airplane flew off into the night, she watched until the lights became too faint to see, and she watched longer still. As if hopeful that the plane would turn around and appear again. But it stayed on course- following the moon.
            “One day”, Sally whispered to herself.
            “One day.”