I’m lying on my back, my hands and feet strewn across my grandmother’s quilt. It was made for my mom when she was just a baby, so it’s a little too small and my head has been pushed to the damp red sand.
I switch my best friend’s hair tie from my left wrist to my right. There’s a red ring where it was on my left wrist. I rub my fingers up and down on it, and its coarse4 and bumpy.
Sighing, I raise myself up on my elbows and take a sip of root
. I lye back down. I don’t notice my eyes closing.
The next thing I know, there’s twinkling stars suspended above my head, as many as there are grains of sand around me. A full moon illuminates the choppy waves just two feet from me.
Knowing the Man on the Moon is keeping watch over me, I close my eyes and drift to sleep.
I dream, but the dream is sad. In it, I have lost you. I’ve lost everything we ever had. Memories made memories that had yet to be made. I wake up crying.
It’s quiet, except for the crash of the waves and my muffled sobs. I reach my hand to the tide and let it carry away my sorrow. The wind rustles the nearby sweet grass, the cool breeze sending chills up my spine.