The Beach II

A little girl drops down in a crouch on the sand at the beach. Her bent knees patched with salt. Her hair wet, like little wet blades of grass. She turns her head—one ear to the sun, the other to the earth, the cool shadow-space made by the architecture of her bent frame—and feels the heat like a great, warm towel just pulled from the dryer, its tan sheen left upon her skin, layer after layer and day after day. 

The tide slides in but it’s thin and foamy, sucking up her feet down below the brown, making her think of the film she saw that made her cry when a horse drowned in quicksand though his boy tried to save him, calling the horse’s name over and over and both of them weeping, she and the boy. 

This new, thin veil of wet is good for drawing, gliding fingers across its surface, fire-bright sunshine, new geometries bent and twisted and made into words. A little bird flaps to land nearby and she watches its needle-beak piercing the beach, over and over, searching for sand fleas as if they were tasty. She forgets about her mother and father, her brothers, sisters, friends and teachers when a dot in the sand wriggles free to a hole and she sticks her little finger down into the earth, following the sand flea as far as it will go. 

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