“They’re just broken bottles” she said, sucking all romance out of finding weathered glass in the sand.
I said, “Help me find them,” and she bent down, her eyes skimming shells like the local she’ll never be as I placed the tiny pieces in her hand and adjusted my wording. “Help me hold them.”
Budweiser browns and Heineken greens collected in her palm, smooth and jagged and she said, “We could make something out of these.”
What a concept, I thought. I’ve got plenty of tiny pieces gathered in jars. Take them all, rinse with water, and create a lamp – something useful and call it art.
I’ve got plenty of tiny pieces gathered in jars; I’ve been collecting them one strange summer after another. How have you been clearing your mind all these years I wanted to ask her,
but she picked up a translucent rock and said, “Is this one?” and then a shell and, “This could be a necklace!” and I smiled at her, instead.
She’s older than me, but our souls meet in the middle, and we’ll never be this young again. What a concept, I thought. I smiled at her and she blushed
and said, “What?” because she was enjoying herself sans nostalgia; her inner child doesn’t know the beach in November. Later on, she’ll get to know my mother,
I’ll take her to local haunts, and she’ll see all my tiny pieces gathered in jars. I’ll tell her about that game called Get Tumbled By Waves and how I almost drowned and
that time my friends and I drank 40s in the morning before going surfing. That was in May before the bennys came. I’ll have to explain that word,
and she’ll roll her eyes and I’ll smile because that’s a tiny piece that can’t be helped.
When she gets a little tipsy, her benny really comes out, but we make it work because she found a piece of blue glass
and said, “This one is beautiful,” and she put it in her pocket along with the other tiny pieces we’d gathered together.
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