Amy Hudock, PhD, is a writer, professor, and editor who lives in South Carolina with her family. She is the coeditor of Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined (Seal Press 2006) and American Women Prose Writers, 1820-1870 (Gale 2001). Her work has been anthologized in the Chicken Soup for the Soul and Cup of Comfort series, as well as in Torn: True Stories of Modern Motherhood, Ask Me About My Divorce, Mama, PhD, and Single State of the Union. She is a cofounder ofLiterary Mama, an online literary magazine chosen by Writers Digest as one of the 101 Best Web Sites for Writers (2005, 2009) and by Forbes as one of their 100 Best of the Web (2005). Her work has also appeared in Skirt!, Equus, The Post and Courier, ePregnancy, and Pregnancy and Baby. She teaches writing (creative and other) at Trident Technical College.
Riding Waves
By Amy Hudock
You look out a bedroom window in your parent’s home in Sea Girt, NJ.
I hear you’re becoming comfortable in sleep,
like a swimmer learning to hold
your breath by going under for progressively longer bits of time.
You’re exploring the boundaries and depths
your dreams have never had before,
the clarity better, the focus sharper,
magnified by molecules of hydrogen and oxygen
and refracted into diamonds of light.
It’s becoming more like home down there.
Coming up to open your eyes is giving you the bends.
You’ve stopped eating, your body shedding its needs
as a diver drops weights to be able to rise.
You can feel the wave building.
The water pulling back, the ancient give and take
in the dance of tides.
You know what it means when water rushes out to sea.
Years you guarded the beach.
Years you lay flat on a surfboard.
Years you watched the movement of water.
You know where this is going.
You know the choice–
to ride what is coming
or to let it crash down around you.
I know you.
We grew up together
in a crucible of making–
young adults
melting down and re-forming
ourselves.
I watched you become.
I have seen you ride through fire before.
I imagine you will ride now.
You wait–
there
in your parents’ house in NJ
for the crest of the wave
that will take you to the shore.
I wait
here
in Charleston, SC
to hear the echo of the crash
that means you are gone.
All the cars should stop and turn on their headlights.
All the people should be wearing black.
I should not be making peanut butter sandwiches
or moving the dirty clothes from the washer to dryer.
None of this should be happening while you are dying.
I want it still enough so I can
hear the northern sea crash–
feel the change in the tides–
and know
that you, the friend of my youth, have completed your last ride.
