Beyond the Edge

She came here, beyond the edge, because she was beyond the edge. Here, she could look straight into the tumult, because it was not her tumult, not her upheavals, not her crashing into the walls. It was not her tragedies.

And though she would spend hours looking into the churning ocean like it was her own life, she always left here calm. For a little while, she would be armoured. She would be like the stone the waves fell upon, jagged and broken, but not brittle. When he came at her, when her liquored father brought the thunder, all she would hear is water dashed upon stone. When she knew the hand was coming, all she could see was the spray of water caught in the wind.

No matter how hard the water fell upon the shoreline, the shore never broke. The water thundered and splashed, but then it just drained away in rivulets between the jagged armour of implacable stone.

Inside the edge, she was the stone. She had to be stone.