Marquette, MI

There’s sand in my bed. Not little granules, stubbornly hiding near my feet, piles. Handfuls of sand that have shaken from my clothes, my toes, escaped from my gnarled ponytail and are now scattered soundly between the gold comforter and the while pillow-top mattress. This is the end result of a night on the beach watching the lights from boats in the distance disappear behind islands and reappear on the other side; squinting at the fading yellow string of lights to differentiate one boat versus many smaller boats; digging my toes into the white sand and watching them sink a little lower with each lap of a wave.

Two days from now, as I am still emptying pockets and shaking my ears from remaining sand, I can build sand castles from another comforter and listen to the bath run in the dark, recreating these past few nights in a desolate town at the beach. I just need one of those ocean noises cassettes with the seagulls in the background. Or a neighbor with a kid.