December’s fragment

from “At the Precipice”

I’ve been divorced from my sons’ father since 2000 and little over a year after taking that leap off an existential cliff into the abyss of single parenting, I was standing on the side of a literal cliff on Maui with my old friend Bob. The fields of short sea grass reached towards the cliff’s edge. The boiling and angry looking Pacific Ocean was below. There was something wild and freeing about the landscape, so beautiful you couldn’t help but want to be a part of it. I spotted a small overhang about thirty feet down, a balcony of stone putting me even closer to the noisy, fearsome water. I wasn’t exactly dressed for climbing in my open-toed Tivas and a bikini. But why would that stop me?

Image 2001 and words copyright Laura Ann Klein 2023