At the Beach

The postcard he would never send found its way into the child’s sand pail after he had carefully selected it from a rack in the souvenir shop cautiously carrying it tucked inside the folds of his red, white and blue striped towel to the seaside. Then he penned the words: Wish you were here… on its field of white, scratching a black “x” where her body might lie alongside his body in the perfectly coiffed sand— in the picturesque seascape on the face of the charming, little card...when a hot wind, filled with love’s urgency, came over the water ( it would not wait) and up onto the beach as if to herald his message to her. The postcard lifted up like a kite swirled past a sour, snoring centenarian, beyond a father and son— oyster rakes in hand despite the spelling of the month-- then alighted in the lovely lap of a small ginger-haired girl who looked curiously up after squinting hard at the card and at its letters... sounding out the “www” and “ssshhh”. She pressed the invitation to her lips and would forever search for its sender.