Dave Coast

I haven’t always loved the water

or myself for that matter.

As a kid, I would kick and scream before swim lessons.

The cold pool deck air, on cold wet skin, on a cold Canadian winter Sunday.

Watching my dad in the gully while I gulped down chlorinated piss.

A drowning failure.

I catch a chill just thinking about those days

watching the snowflakes fall on Lake Ontario’s grey west shores

while I sat inside plotting my escape

to the city of glass on Canada’s wet west coast.

Twenty-two years old.

Out on my own

but not quite alone anymore.

For the first time I felt alive

swimming in the icy clear waters of a naked English Bay.

For the pacific was now my home.

Dave’s coast.

Ha!

I tattooed this feeling onto my left foot.

Rooting myself further to the rising pacific northwest sun

My mountains.

My trees.

My coast.

How desperate I was to belong to something.

That through my desperation.

I became something

New.

My name no longer a story but a feeling.

Even if that may seem silly to you.

Because isn’t home really just a feeling after all?