adamak

broadestcity

waves crash rhythmically against the shore, drawing in and out, breathing with the earth. if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the tinkling of small stones rolling against one another as they are dragged back to slumber on the ocean bed.
two pairs of shoes lay in the doorway, haphazardly kicked off at the end of a run across the still-hot sand, some of which has now made its way across the floors of the house, where it will stay despite sweeping, and into the shoes themselves, where it will remain no matter how hard you clap them together. your footprints are already vanishing from the water’s edge.

the air is warm and sits heavy with rain that will come tomorrow. but tonight you sit outside, laugh, and pick at the food lining the table between you. the humidity hangs thick with the buzz of distant insects singing, cut with a light breeze whispering through the dark, and you are thankful you are alive, here, at this table, in this night, in this place.
your cup swims with wine and lip gloss shimmers on the rim. the stars above shine back, spilled across the sky like the glitter you spilled on your mother’s carpet when you were too young to know how hard glitter is to remove from carpets. maybe even harder than it is to remove sand from shoes.
you’ve laid your swimming clothes over the back of an unused chair and the dripping of water against the stone floor joins the orchestra of bugs and beach and the bustling of a town nestled out of sight across the bay. later, before the rain comes to wash it away, the small puddle of seawater forming beside the chair will dry, leaving salt crystals in its wake, something to say it was there and that, for a moment, it left its mark.

the record skips and you step inside to turn it over, silhouetted by the warm glow of the living room lamp. the opening notes pour out of the speakers and it sounds like something you heard before, long ago, a different time, a different place, but you know you were dreaming of this.
you had seen it then in your mind’s eye, the way your skirt would sway loosely as you danced your way back to the table, the way your wrists jangle with bracelets as you reach over for more bread, the conversation which flows easily, as naturally as the blood in your veins.

this is where you were always meant to be, you just had to give yourself time.