Reblogged from Fragments of Light:

The grief, the loss of what she had hoped for, lapped as relentlessly, as inevitably, as the breakers crashing again and again—minute after minute, day after day. Repeating their reach and retreat for millennia. Tumbling like so much seaweed, all of what-almost-was washed ashore, only to be drug back out again. Over and over.

She leaned back on a towel, draping a black shirt over her eyes to shut out the sun, to escape the visual parable of her mourning. Hidden, cocooned in a secret world, she faded in and out of consciousness, gliding beyond the bondage of time… crashing in and out, forwards and backwards… shattering into myriad white droplets, absorbed under shifting currents, scattering and drifting thousands of miles from shore, mere glints on a swell—

A baby cried, tugged her into alertness. The child quieted. She swished her heels, expending off the towel, digging deeper into the sand. Coarse and cool. Fading… sinking through grain after grain, sifting through layers—

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