while the chorus screams 'unity!'

The sea was a static backdrop, cool and a sickly greenish-gray; the wind was like an invisible brick wall, biting into flesh with the grit of sand and mortar. The clouds slid along the horizon, stretched thin and torn, like a crow’s wing, and the beginnings of rain pitted the soft sand, buckshot from the sky. The sand was deceptively soft looking, like velvet or cotton fluff, but when laid upon, it became cement, hard and unforgiving. And the rain, gently hush-hushing against the waves became like needles against exposed flesh, chilling it and sinking in to the bone, in the weird gray twilight, flesh became corpse white and sharp as knives. Behind closed eyelids it was easier to remember the good times, the times when the sun shone high overhead and gulls called and clucked to each other about breadcrumbs and fish. Now it was only soft grays and greens, like a bruise on the inside of a forearm, fingerprints fading with time. Sometimes there were other people on the beach, running on the hard packed sand at the edge of the water, flirting with the tattered lips of the waves, almost being pulled in but veering off in the other direction at the last second. How then could some outwit mother nature, while others fell into her traps, never knowing that they could’ve had a different outcome, if only they’d done something, changed something about their lives.
Behind closed eyelids, a different universe played out. The slice of a smile, all slightly crooked teeth and sunburned cheeks, the feeling of cotton against naked arms and legs, while the curtains, half pulled across large windows, filled like bellows with summer warmed air, only to shift side to side and huff gently, exhaling the air across the room like a sigh. That time meant that the sky through the window was neon blue, like a robin’s egg or that cup from second grade that had long since been lost but not the memory of its color. That time meant, long trips in an old car that stank of oil and old cigarettes, sand on feet and the seats, and a beat up hula dancer wiggling on the dash, a loop of bright plastic beads swinging from the rear view mirror. That time meant laughter and silly inside jokes. ‘yea-uh’ ‘yee-he-he-ugh!’ ‘Such a good little wifey!’ ‘I wish I had an evil twin…’ Those days meant not thinking about muscle aches, how tendons pulled and stretched, and pain from things not altogether age related, swam to the surface like oil in water.
If this were a movie, this would be the moment when the music would swell, something laced with violins and cellos, something dark but vaguely uplifting, so you would know that things were bad now, but they’d get better soon, back to days of sun and smiles. The rain picked up the pace, no longer needles now, closer to daggers, baseball bats. The waves were stronger now too, they rose up, higher and higher, like some Halloween monster, before slumping onto the sand with a defeated roar. Each one was just a little closer on the sand, gaining slow inches up the dry, papery dunes. The wet sand was cold, cold in the way that it felt hot, almost scorching to the touch. Much the same way that touching hot metal could feel cold. Numb feet made it hard to walk but it made the pain recede, like an hourglass tipped the other way around.
Behind closed eyelids, the rain sounded like a freight train rumbling down the tracks, solid and inevitable, like death and taxes. Slow and steady but it would make it to wherever it was going, like some dumb beast. Blue sky and gulls singing. Blue-black water. Smiles that curled at the edges like a water damaged photograph. Chemical salty rain and dagger cold sand. Naked limbs tangled in cotton sheets. Seashells sharp and needle bright. Sticky-soft Naugahyde seat covers. Black ragged clouds. Hula dancer tangled with bright plastic beads. The two realities swam over each other, like negatives of the same thing but at two different times. Past and present. They settled onto the beach like tattered pages, sifting into the sand, almost forgotten.

‘Precious and fragile things, need special handling’