Inhaling the sunset.

We stood on the beach, days before the new year. The air was cool, and the sand danced over our feet. It all begged us to go back inside, but we knew the sun would be setting soon, and we knew that at the moment the sunset, we would be rid of all of our worries. My husband and I stood on that cold beach and wrote down all of what rendered us motionless in the past year. We wrote down each hurt, each pain, each agonizing moment that we wished to dispose of. We filled the black mole skin pages line by line, until the sun set. The sky turned red and orange, as if inviting this burning of the past, as if allowing us this one moment in time to rid ourselves of the pain behind us, and invited us to move forward. We tore the pages from the book, and let the ocean swallow them whole. I watched as the papers floated and rested with the waves, I watched as they were illuminated with red and orange, I stood and inhaled the sunset, and all that it meant. I watched pieces of the past drift into the burning sun, and with that letting go of so much that had gripped me, so much that had paralyzed my soul.