Woman on a foggy beach

July 4, 1980

I’ve seen her sitting here every evening we’ve been here, not near where I am, but closer to the water’s edge where she can see glow of lights on the lips of the incoming waves, the pushing and pulling we all feel this hear the sea – foam hissing over the still warm sand that bore the heavy breath of sun all day.

A hiss and pop, and a long sigh as each wave eases back out, a whisper of a kiss, before the returning plunge.

I see her hair glowing in the same reflected light from the boardwalk as illuminates the froth of incoming waves, as if she and the waves are made from the same luxurious star light.

Nearby, the candle-maker closes up his shop with a cough and a snap of lock, and the slow thud of his heavy step over the boarded walk behind me.

The heat of the day eases up with a rising mist so that the lamps that illuminate his way glow in a fog-like haze, and he is soon lost in an earlier than usual twilight, leaving me and this woman near the sea like islands alone, though the muffled sound of other feet and voices sound from out of the fog.

If not for the warm breath of the summer air licking my cheek, I would think this was winter, so remote and alone are we, though in changing of day into night, I feel the urgency of change, and just a hint of chill the deeper night will bring.

But I know long after I have sought out the depths of sleep, she will be here, feeling the caress of cold on her face, breathing in the chill air with sighs as deep as the see, her mind’s eye perhaps repainting pale sand into frigid snow, feeling as we both feel now the tug of the sea, its in and out, its up and down, its every throbbing, unsatisfied lusts.

And I wonder what tapestry her thoughts weave, and who it is she is waiting for, and will she need to undo the stitches she weaves each night to buy him more time for his return.

And I wonder, if when he comes he will be as special as she expects, this sea captain drawing up with the blessing of gods, a man full of manners and might, as furious as the sea itself, and as hungry for her as she is for him, with both easing in and out with tides of their own making, leaving sighs of whispering foam over the sand they have imprinted with the shape of their bodies.

More fog roles in and she is lost it, but not the sighs.