Whimseas

My seashell collection had grown. I wonder who lived in them before they cracked and died and washed up onto the sand. They must have rued the beach, the land of corpses of their own kind. The beach that coated the off-white sink as I washed them of it, as I washed my hair and hands and undergarments of it. Wringing.

If I put them to my tongue they’d taste of salt. I don’t.

The minute we leave, the lack of it will be disorienting. The clouds in the city will be a relentless grey and we will look up at them and they will gloom down on us.

I’ll ask for the rain every other day, a visit to ease the land-lockedness.

I bought a L’Occitanie travel size body wash for the trip. It was so lavendery I immediately felt a headache bubbling in my sinuses. It was not good at washing away the sea, which lingered in all its sweet sandy salinity, all over the tiles and in-between my toes.

I lay the shells to dry by the tap while I threw several soaked band-aids into the bin. The sea and the subsequent bath had left my shoebites raw and fresh, the skin peeling off them. Two identical wounds, on the spurs of my big toes. I had to bandage them again and I did a bad job of it.

The dark tiles of our Airbnb coated my feet with our own sand again. My hair was curling stiff, wonderfully, and the hours spent being lulled by the sea had us sleepy and a little drunk. That morning I’d plopped down on the bed in my friends’ room to curl my lashes and P was putting on kajal in the tiny mirror. He had to bend a little to look into it. K had spread his collection of bracelets onto the sheets as if to choose which ones he’d wear. He had put on nearly all of them.

Now we were making noodles. There are inside jokes that leave us gasping for air, fish out of water that we were, that will feel impossible to relay later and have the same effect. I didn’t need a drink but I wanted one. We drank Bacardi Plus that night, all tart and cold, and Goli soda the next day at lunch before we went to board our bus back.

The waves crashed around inside my chest for four days afterwards.

I read The Lover on the beach and had seashells brought to me by K. Feet stinging but toes in the sand regardless. Our slippers sat by me, three pairs, overflowing with the shells we were collecting. The poem writes itself.

I took a photo and the phone told me I had no space. You’re going to have to take my word for it.

My friends were very good at finding seashells. I kept running into the water to catch a warm wave or two before coming back onto the sand to recover. The sea wasn’t gentle—not like taking a painkiller while you have a fever (the water washing over your feet), and before you know it, slipping into a dream (the tide pulling back, leaving you up to your ankles in the earth.) She was strong and eluded any metaphors.

We returned after dark, bogged down. Children thrown out of the oceans volatile embrace.