8/21 SAND & GRACE

It’s true, I don’t know my own mind.

That shifting, sandy beach of thought, littered with unexpected debris after every storm. Truths washed up like rank seaweed and glowing agates, stranded jellyfish quivering in the early morning fog, one perfect crescent of serrated shell, half-buried. A net for catching.

(“Catching what, though?” you may well ask. “And what will be thrown back? There’s a sharp edge to every hook and line.”)

More impossible still, to know someone else’s mind: a face turned into the wind, limbs clinging like limpets, or unclasped and bending away into the fog. An oyster shell, rough and cutting, shifts underfoot and tips balance. Perspective drifts. There are glimpses of phosphorescence, shimmering and fey, churned up by the waves.

No wonder communication is so absurd! It’s all we can hope for, after each mad flounder from one foreign beach to another: to reach out in blindness and fold our fingers around a strange hand reaching also, to pull with all the goodwill we can muster.

All we can hope for is to collapse, laughing (please, let there be laughing!) in a salty-wet tangle of sand and grace.