The ocean buries her feet for a moment, and then retreats, a dull roar filling her ears like some hidden monster. Again. And again. The sand slips through her open fingers; her knees are buried in it, her shins, her ankles; everything the water has not touched. A big wave is coming, however - she can see the white foam - and she knows the sand won’t be there for long. It will all be gone, gone, gone, swept away to someplace she can’t follow.

She is on her first period in a little over nine months, and her purse is packed with tampons because she didn’t know how long she would stay (forever, perhaps. As long as it took). Here there is only the ocean to fill her mind the way the sand fills her hands, slipping through. The grains build in her lap, a growing mountain with four sides, two turrets, and a moat. She hasn’t been to the beach in such a long time, and she’d forgotten to bring buckets.…

The crested wave reaches shore, crashing down and sweeping the sand over her legs away in its wake. Her sandcastle is all but ruined, and when the wave retreats, she is left spluttering sand and salt water into the remains. The taste of it is gritty in her mouth. Spitting it out just like a boy, she recalls the bundle she left at the hospital six days ago, still and covered with a blue blanket to mark its gender.

The doctors had said it would be a difficult birth, and at the end of it, all she had to show was a bundle of flesh that was buried two days ago. She can’t think of anything else now, only of her child and all the things he won’t do, all the things she won’t do with him (like building sandcastles). She came here to forget that, hoping the effortless rhythm of the ocean would drain her, rock her to sweet oblivion….

“What are you doing out here?”

She looks up, startled, into the blue-grey eyes of her husband. Looking away, back to the restless ocean that is so much more understanding (she wants to forget this and ignore it and never talk of it again, but he can’t seem to understand), she sighs, her next words coming in a whisper.

“I just wanted to come. Get my mind off things.”

He sinks down into the sand beside her, one arm slipping around her shoulders. There is only the crash and retreat of the endless ocean, and his warmth, there, at her side.

“How about if we walk instead, hm? You and me - how’s that?”

Silent, she allows herself to be led, bag in one hand, the other in her husband’s grip. Her toes dig into the sand, and behind her lies what is left of her sandcastle, quietly crumbling away.