Walking slowly – ankles aching – you tend to see the small things on the shore.
Each shell a death – they delight and enchant. I can’t quite wrap my mind around that.
Is it something to do with mortality –
the big picture –
what we leave behind, un(in)tended?
In the right light it’s all beautiful.
(Sounds like I’m lit; sadly not.)
I imagine a beach scattered with human bones – bleached, clean, serene. Would that be horribly beautiful or just horrible? Am I a psychopath?
Nahhh. I just see a pretty shell on the shore.
Another.
I find a baby’s ear, the most prized shell of my childhood on a beach a thousand miles away, a thousand years distant.
And think: who thought to call it that?
* * *
Not A Psychopath
