Sand

Dunes
photo by gakout.

What are they talking about? Why do they crowd around my bed on a Saturday morning, prodding me for answers? I don’t know what I did last night, I don’t know where I was or who I was with. So just go away. Come back another day. Maybe then I’ll have something to say. But they don’t leave. They make a pot of coffee on the stove and hover overhead, while the room spins, while the dusty air slowly fills my lungs, exits my lungs, fills my lungs. My chest brings me to life like a bellows and I start to remember.

A bonfire, with faces I didn’t recognize. Where were we? On the beach, that’s right, and passing around bottles of rum and vodka. I remember running out into the surf alone. Or was I with someone? I was with someone, a girl. She had long brown hair nearly black in the moonlight. I remember the cold of the water and the saltiness. We kissed, and her lips tasted of salt. I lost her somewhere on the beach. Or was it in the dunes? I remember sand, lots of dry sand. It got into everything. I remember trying to shake it off me, trying to get it out of my pockets my hair my eyes and nearly weeping because I could not get out of the sand.

I am not certain how I got home, or who these people are, or where the girl with the dark hair in the moonlight went, but I’m sure they’re going to tell me. Let me take a shower first. Sand is in my hair. Sand is under my fingernails. Sand is in the crusty corners of my eyes, and in every fold of the bed sheets.