We won't need legs to stand

Sometimes, late at night, when my body lingers between sleep and wakefulness, I go to a certain place that is all my own.  A bed dressed in white sits at the center of an otherwise empty room, sheets still ruffled from use.  Sunshine streams through the skylights and the windows.  As I walk toward the doorway, under my feet instead of carpet I feel soft sand working its way between my toes.   As I pass through the threshold to the kitchen, She’s there, warming me with a smile that communicates our love more effectively than a thousand words ever could.  The house is small—simple; the kitchen fades into the outside world without a door.  I step out into a forest, blanketed with sand rather than soil.  Tall oaks, redwoods, and firs envelop the land in a shadowy embrace, but end abruptly some twenty feet from a glistening sea, where small waves lap endlessly at the sand.  I walk towards the sea, and stand in the wet sand, watching the saltwater tease the small grains that soon begin to wrap around my feet.  In this moment, with the wind playing against my cheek and the smell of salt and sand and leaves and wood in the air, I am finally alone, relaxed, and myself, and then—just then—I am complete.