Picture This: Dawn, The Mull of Kintyre

A year ago, on the edge: Of Carskiey Estate, of the Kintyre Peninsula, of Scotland, of my self-conception. November winds thundered off the Irish Sea and shook Shore Cottage that night. I shook within the cottage, metaphysically collapsing under the weight of sudden self-knowledge only a fortnight old. I could not yet tell my traveling companion, my dad, the revelation I’d had. I didn’t have the words. Had I, I would’ve swallowed them for his sake. So in the shaking darkness by the sea I scrawled my meager prayer.

night take my eyes
from the howling sea
leave
the broken wind
& crumbling waves
beyond the reeds

night take my eyes
from these limbs 
these lies
my sun of mind

please

I woke to gray wind and lay bare feet upon warm slate, dressed quickly, and stalked through the cottage as if compelled to watch the fleeting of the night. I threw open the seaward door and blinked back tears of light and gale. The autumn sun climbed over the horizon in cyano-orange brilliance. The sea somersaulted upon the beach, dune grasses swayed by the stones, and the sky yawped its joy. Gently, with surety and resolve, the turning of the earth reminded me that all things change, we will pass through darkness, and we are subjects to all things yet master of one.

At some point my dad joined me in the door. And the day was bright.