'The First Ten Seconds' by Brid McGinley

Oncoming waves rise, snarling wolves pouncing, fangs of sea foam, wind-whipped mane of sea-spray. 

‘Do you good,’ they said. They’re wrong. Nothing dampens memory. 

Feet in water, breakers splashing cold shock, body shivers.

Now petrified, braced against the suck of ebbing tide. She turns, gasps, shrieks as uncaring waves pound her shoulders.

But unnoticed, the black hole contracts, darkness wanes.

She hears her child’s joyous giggle, sees tiny feet dance over summer waves, the inexorable trickle of sand. 

It’s time. Facing the wolf’s gaping maw, here, now, nothing else. She dives.

Through roaring breakers, fighting churning seaweed, swirling shingle. Into the silence of being.

Then startling the surface, she gulps a new world. 

Ten seconds. A start.