Charming Patterns

Powder-white sand rattles between flexing toes like tiny, bleached avalanches. The Australian sky, wide, taut, and impossibly blue screens my field of vision in a blinding smear as sea droplets evaporate on my body leaving salted grains softly stinging. I raise my five-year-old hand and closely examine its withered skin from knuckle to nail. The soaked ridges and puckered lines are as deep as trenches, smooth as dunes. Today the sun is savage. In another ten minutes these charming patterns on my palms will return to a dry and simply printed landscape. I close my eyes and listen to the quaking of the surf as the heat bakes me down to the bones. Soon, I will follow the path of shells and seaweed back down to the waves and again, disappear into the churning foam, ready to transform my skin once more.