The bathing suit is not kind to her, the bite of its hemline sinks deep
into her flesh.
Her stomach cascades into currents that ripple with each movement and
the stretch marks
on her thighs are silt marks left by the tide. Our boy doesn’t notice, of course.
He shouts with
delight at each rising wave, calling to his mother to watch him as he jumps
against them.
Water laps at her ankles as she looks on, I cannot see her face.
I think of when we first met, how she held the scent of rosebuds on her skin.
She was
silicate of the gentlest kind, a diffraction of frost captured pink. Her voice was
country-fresh
and she touched me with the tenderness of a newly cut stem.
The sea glints crystalline and curves an alloy around the briolette of her hips.
She turns
to me and smiles. The sky paints amber above her. I feel something. Not the desire
of old, but
something elemental. It is a layering above the ashlar of my bones, fissured yet intact.
It ties me to her,
this armature of blush woven glass, veined and imperfect, that rises from the sea.
So, I stay and wait, to feel the fizz of mineralite skip against my lips once more.
