The Morning After on the Beach

So hold me tight but not before first letting me go so that I may know what it’s like to regain what was once lost. So that I may come to be acquainted with the cost. It happens every other day. Still, I would never do you the dishonour of asking you to stay. Mold me into form like the earth’s molten clay so that I may be the person you want by your side; the reliquary to which you pray.

 Crashing waves call me into their duplicitous calm. When the tide recedes, so shall I. The sea is unforgiving. I was taught to go with the flow. Now I’m stuck in the riptide with nowhere to go. I toil with surrender, but my pride won’t allow it. I want to fight myself and win. Sticking thorns in calloused skin. Tell me again, when does your treatment begin?

 The days are slow. I’m wading through waist-high waters, glacial like you’ll never know. Coffee grounds in the bin. Going to church on Sundays and still unable to wash off the sin—the guilt and the anguish of not having let you in. Is it too late to speak? Should I wear my mistakes like I did last week? I want to be his muse on Mondays and on rainy days too when there’s nothing to see and nothing to do.

Last night’s loss lingers like a bad dream— carnage I carry around. The air tasted like confession but I couldn’t clamber out from under my shell. Deleting old texts. Burning polaroids in the sink. Committing the curve of your lip to memory. Catching the scent of your cologne— instant regret. I want to hate you but not yet. No, not yet.  

The sun sets. A field of scintillation rolls out over the sea. The last seams of light stich the day together. The sparkling ocean heaves and rushes against the shore. The bleeding sun scorches the thinnest regions of my skin. Flys start to swarm the sand around me, but I won’t let them win. I lather in coconut oil and the scent is that of summer and yet it’s only spring.

It’s too early to determine the damage. Too early to consider what could have been. Some collusion occurred last night. The casualties sunbathing on separate ends of the beach. How could he have known she was always here? Within but past his reach.