Cold mornings, bright days, beating the heat & the system (we were).
At the beach you would say, "We belong here" and
My God (we did).

I remember the ladybugs, a cloud, a swarm, a field of them
on our clothes and in our wet hair and our sandy hands felt around for a lighter and (we always)
laughed because we had good luck anyway.

And maybe you don't understand, there it is, maybe you don't--
but this isn't about you it's about the beach.

Just imagine this, please: a warmth you feel creeping into the spongy center of your bones, a roughness, a softness, a light blue lifeguard tower surrounded by a million billion grains of sand-

And the sky was like a bleached sheet, spread out everywhere.