When I die, I will return—not to rest, but to search. I will drift through the afterlife like a tide undone, seeking the instants I never lived near the sea. My soul will wander barefoot along forgotten shores, tracing the outline of memories that never came to be. Each wave will whisper to me, soft and persistent, telling stories of days I never touched, of sunrises I never watched dissolve into the ocean’s embrace.

The salty breeze will carry echoes—fragments of laughter, the hush of twilight, the rhythm of a heart that longed for water. I will gather these moments like seashells, each one a relic of a life half-lived, each one a prayer for the time I missed. And though the sand may slip through my fingers, I will keep searching, forever drawn to the sea’s promise of what might have been.

©️ Beatriz Esmer