Free Read: Sand Angels
My entry for this years Pulp Literature poetry contest. Made the top ten.
Sand Angels
The afternoon sun produces little warmth. The ocean wind cuts with the pain of midwinter.
Elderly couples walk their dogs along the sand, their beasts avoiding the rough rolling seas.
Children wrapped in layers until near immobility are herded down the beach by young mothers. They are desperate for the outing in the blessed sunlight after weeks of relentless storms.
One child, feet as bare as the dogs’, tightrope walks along the tide line making sand angels when she falls.
The sand coats the summer flowers of her dress and tangles into her winter darkened hair.
Her mother wants the sun more than a victory concerning the necessity of shoes and cardigans.
The child kicks a footprint, not her own, erasing it before the wind and sea have their chance.
She tracks up the beach to the previous step, brushing it with her hand, then the step before that, seemingly determined to remove all traces of a stranger from the length of jagged coast.
Shadows grow long too early, the day too close to the solstice.
The elderly couples and their dogs walk past and judge.
The young mothers cast glances at the bare feet and a dress of yellow flowers.
The well bundled children kick sand in solidarity.
No one speaks, however.
No one scolds except with their eyes.
Another storm is coming and this is the last chance for sunlight.
