(whatever will happen, don’t turn back!)
(yes again: some language of sexual violence in here – just be easy with you.)
It’s 9:30pm, and people in the neighborhood are still out for their evening walks — kids on bikes and scooters, couples with happy, wagging dogs on leashes, everyone moving slow, leisurely. There are pop-pop-pops in the distance, and at first, I wonder if they’re gunshots, and then I remember the fireworks we saw above a copse of trees on the way home from the ice cream stand. The mosquitoes came out tonight, as did the first of the sand dollars — we found a mid-sized one this morning, and then two babies tonight: tiny grey sand dollars smaller than the tip of my pinkie finger. The ocean was cold today, colder than it was yesterday or the day before — I can’t understand how that happens. The ocean is itself, no? There was something I wanted to tell you this morning, but it’s gone now. Do you know how thoughts fade like that? I finished the Terry McMillan and have moved onto another beach novel. Today we talked with friends, supped with family. I didn’t have any incest thoughts or rape theorizing. We had sun all day and soaked in it. This was my theme song. My legs are mottled with salt, my skin tacky with sweat and sunblock and bug spray. I fell asleep on the sand — a nap! — and woke up not feeling sticky and gross inside, not feeling as though someone had painted me from belly to brainstem with the residue of incest dreams (damnit. I guess I was wrong, what I said before).