(ellipsis)

The zeal of the morning shine struck and carried beneath the bloody clouds, tearing shadows across the whispered landscape. The sand shown orange as I slithered and slicked beside my towering shadow, and the waves sang Wash and Show. The girl slid from the salty lifeguard shack behind me, padding her way –surely, padding—across the pouring sand. The salt blew her hair into my face and my nose filled my head with the flowers growing in the sand as her hand pressed into mine, fingers binding and tangling there on the sand.

She said something then, notes lilting and tilting me into her, and she held me and I could only smile as I fell into her. More words, soft, hypnotic, lolling and lulling reverberating through me, wrapping around me and rolling with me, soft, warm. Perfect.

And somewhere in the distance a flag clanged against its pole as a breeze tugged it awake to stand and greet us. The click, sharp snap, crisp through the air as though the world were silent but for the pointed noise rising above the low rushing wash and the hissing retreating show that muffles the silence of every beach.

And her hand squeezing again like a click, like a tug away from the distance that had captured my eyes and her words rolled over me like a smile, like thunder or a heavy blanket that pushes down on the chest and arms. A sense. An overwhelming tide of gasping breath and pounding heart. An undercurrent towing me down and down and away with her crystal eyes rushing like water into my lungs, her fingers holding gentle, holding me in the tumble under her smile.

She looks away, her eyes breaking away, riding back along the horizon, drawn by something I could not see. I could breath again, and the wind blew her hair back across her shoulders.