From my purple and white striped towel, I can see a lot of shapes and even more lines that are shapes I can’t see the end of. I can see many shades of lots of colours, which are just colours in their varied stages. For example, the opaque blue that makes up the sky has more layers than the translucent one of the water. There are grains of sand, upon grains of sand, upon grains of sand peppered with wraths of seaweed, wraths of seaweed, wraths of seaweed. A see weed. I am seeping, holding onto a pee.
Some rocks are becoming more and more visible as the tide line retracts and I can relax knowing our bits and bobs will be staying dry for a while. The line was approaching, and close, for a moment. I flirted with it when I let it wet my toes and my iPhone was right there next to me, exposed. I don’t think I’d mind if the translucent blue took it because you say Instagram is toxic. As the rocks expose they look like large zombie figures crawling up towards the car park, I look up towards the single blue civic and cannot recall locking it.
Every now and again, when a March fly buzzes too close to my ear or a wave thumps the shore, I am pulled away from the page and into the translucent blue. I have been reading, re-reading, for twenty minutes and have progressed shy of four pages. Every now and again the translucent blue becomes so undulated it hides your bronzed head and my heart un-rhythms.
Studying the fine white lines swimming from my bare nipple, I pluck a single snaking hair. Similar, much thicker, lines crawl out of my crouch. The lines trace my inner thigh; an ugly indication of tissue filling too quickly, so quickly that my skin can’t keep up. I don’t mind, I plan on having another Pringle, regardless of the white lines, and maybe if there are some among the bits and bobs, a Tim-Tam or two too.
How handsome these people were in the midst of their youth!
I have read, re-read, this line six times now. I put down the book and press my index finger into different areas of skin. The effect is a white finger-pad-size circle, it is fleeting: back to russet in no time. With my back to the big translucent blue, I search for sunscreen among the bits and bobs. The March flies are attacking; their buzz is silenced for a moment when they blindly collide with my human body. In ploy, I throw a Tim-Tam a meter away. I find the sunscreen with its bottom emerging from the grains of sand and forgo the last of my water.
I return to the horizon. Initially, I am tranquillized by the flat. I register it, so levelled, between sets so you can see, clearly, what’s in there. But it’s what’s not that implodes within me. The sunscreen top, followed by my knees, falls, thumps, into the grains of sand. Even the march flies dissolve.
Yellow Days 