Glimmering and Gone
I sat on the cold sand shouldering the nocturnal breeze,
my hair swaying all along with the tall palm trees.
The waters narrated a story to me
and I sang them a lullaby.
They were lazy, they nearly snored,
but kept on talking, getting excited
and collapsing down flat and wide.
The stars being our lamplight,
there stood nothing to disturb what we stayed for.
Looking down at the glistening cyan gills of the water
made me feel like I was the one their secrets were kept for.
And then the ocean tossed a white seashell out to me.
The seashell was rid of its little sandy freckles
as the waves pulled away,
and it sat there,
half buried
and half
full.
It slowed me down as I looked at it.
It danced in its own rhythm
and told me all of what I wasn’t told
by its home.
I had lived a separate life in the sea
as that seashell,
promising myself to come back and meet me.
I took it up and it revealed to me a brown spot
that wasn’t seen when it was buried.
It was like that of a burned candle,
only a candle burned to alight a spark
and this did so to diminish the shine in which
it had just gleamed.
Ugly, that blemish.
I tossed it back and it skipped twice before
dropping down to the dark oceanic hell.
The sand on which I sat sank deeper.
The water ceased to tell me stories.
The breeze no longer wanted to
move the palm trees.
The stars dimmed down
leaving only the moon on duty.
I walked away from the shore
and from my accomplice,
breaking my word by tossing it
into the mouth of the sea,
hoping I would return
back to where I could be as quiet
and still have someone to sit with me.
I took a final look back at the water.
The moonlight lent its rays
to the glimmering seashell
as it swam afloat,
and far away
from me.
