Barefoot

Barefoot and holding hands, we walked the water’s edge. I remember looking down at our hands. I couldn’t tell where your fingers stopped and my fingers began and how good that felt. Pants rolled up mid-calf, we flirted with the waves and then you wrote my name in the sand with your big toe and we laughed until we cried. We talked about you, and me, and whispered of the brand new us. The colors of the sunset had blended the blue-green of the water right into the sky by the time we packed up our things and put on our sandy shoes to leave, and I had never felt such joy and sweet abandon. Sometimes at night when sleep is a stranger and the covers are pulled up chin-tight, I think of that day on the beach, how we talked of you, and me, and the brand new us, and the reckless abandon. I can’t go barefoot now without thinking about you. We never talked about the things that could get in the way and how to push them aside. We never gave a thought to how it might someday end.