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Writer's pictureH. M. L. Swann

Day 97: A Beach


300 Days of Writing

Day 97 A Beach:

The beach was cold. Behind the wheel of my Prius and I zoned out driving aimlessly until I found myself driving down the narrow beach lane in the dark early hours of a December morning.


I sat in the car for five minutes before deciding to brave the temperature. I instantly regretted the decision, but was too stubborn to turn round. I trudged across the dune. The only benefit of the gelid temperatures was the fact that it had frozen the sand in place, making it easy to walk across, even in boots.


Cresting the hill, I saw it. The lake was a heap of ice and sand. Brown streaks of earth embedded into the ice. It was magnificent and gruesome.

The wind cut through me unimpeded. I gripped my sides and kept moving forward. What I expected to find, or hoped to forget, I couldn’t tell.


Or at least, I didn’t want to.


I didn’t want to remember her. With her tiny toes and perfect gummy smile. Her eyes were still that murky grey blue, the color of another world, the world of the womb.

At least, they had been.


That was when I felt it, an awful, guttural gasp of emotion. Something I had been repressing for days. Or had it been weeks?


I screamed. Shouted. Yelled until my throat was raw and my skin numb, but the cold couldn’t take away the empty hollow feeling that had consumed me since she left.


My eyelashes stuck together, tears freezing the lashes at the corners. I bent over and made a snowball that was mostly frozen sand and I hurled it into the water. The ball splattered, breaking apart at first impact. Particles of sand were still on my gloves, sticking to the felt.

That’s how it was, losing you. You were gone, broken, yet still, you clung to me.


Сайхан Бичээрэй!


H



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