It’s my favorite place in Seattle, I think – a stretch of two miles along the water. I’ve come to escape my worries, but it seems like they’ve followed me here. Under my feet, I feel concrete, grass, asphalt, a worn trail, and the shifting of smooth sea pebbles. I walk aimlessly in search of some peace, and my worries walk beside me.

Today, the sky is cloudy, the pinks and oranges high up where I can’t reach. Dotting the coast, small coves, furnished with driftwood and round speckled rocks tumbling in the clear water of waves too gentle to wash my worries away. Instead they sit here with me, tender in their silence, as I wait for the sun to go down.

Some days I hold my worries, but today, my worries hold me. Today, like many days, I find no freedom here – only a tenuous calm. I listen to the sound of bikes cycling past and leaves rustling from a faint breeze against an everpresent rhythm, the moon slowly, imperceptibly, pulling it away.

After enough time has passed and the warmth of the day has left my fingers, I leave my worries here. I hope they find the peace I could not, or if they are anything like me, at least find it beautiful here. And I’ll come back to visit, if not tomorrow then some day. I will come back when the sun is not shy and bring for them new friends – worry friends to meet their worry wives and worry children, in this place where they can make a worry life and a worry home and follow their worry hopes and worry dreams.

I hope they keep each other company. I am far from home and I miss my family and I miss my mother and I worry about her worries like she must worry about mine. So I come here to the water to sit with old friends, witness their worry love, tell their worry stories, laugh at their worry jokes, and learn from them how to live my worry life.

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_{This piece was inspired by the poem My Worries Have Worries by Laura Villareal.}