Zuma Daze

zuma beach daze the marine layer rolls in like a bad decision you made at nineteen and never quite shook. you can't see fifty feet. the lifeguard tower floats in the gray like a ghost with a day job, and somewhere out there the water keeps doing what it's always done, not caring whether you watch. you came here to think ahead. that's the joke. you drove up PCH with the windows down to figure out the next move and the fog said no. the fog said today you get ten feet in any direction, take it or leave it. and the breeze, if you can call it that, doesn't blow so much as lean on you. salt and kelp and somebody's charcoal from a fire pit that died at dawn. it sticks to your arms, your hair, the inside of your head. the surfers sit out there anyway, black shapes on a gray sheet, waiting for something they can't see coming. maybe that's the whole instruction manual. you wanted a horizon. you got a wall of soft nothing and the sound of water hitting sand it's hit a billion times before. sit down. the sand is cold and a little damp. the future is out there past the fog line, same as it ever was, and it'll still be there at noon when the sun burns through whether you solved anything or just sat here, sticky with salt, breathing. that's the thing about zuma. it doesn't clear up because you need it to. it clears up when it's ready. mostly you just wait, and the waiting, it turns out, was the day.