Building Sandcastles

Building Sandcastles

She was building a sandcastle on the shore.

The early morning sun was just beginning to lend its credence to the water; bestowing warmth and possibility on pebbles, water receding and roiling back on itself, and burning memories into the shoreline with the care of a mad hatter on his vengeance run.

Her footprints led me here.  I picked my way through dunes and fences and old gates.  There were warning signs.

“Beware of tide.”

The tide will pull you under and you will drown.  Like memories.  We have the foresight to avoid them but something always draws us closer.  So I walked with my head down, eyes glued to footprints fading fast.

See, there are nights when the gale here leads the salt winds down alley ways and over fences.  Beyond old gates and across quiet streets it moves into open windows and stirs curtains into a restless dance designed for one.  And the floors creak with the moisture of 100 years.  It is with prudence that the ocean surges forward and rolls back on itself pulling grains of sand, separating lovers that once felt solid as a rock, and dragging the continent into the great wide open.  Sometimes I swear I can feel it.  As if the waves are pounding on my door and my heart it beating faster, and I swear that clock read daybreak long ago.  But the second hand just keeps dripping seconds down the wall.  They collect with the moisture in the floor; sinking in and backing down like memories.

I can feel the bed move and suddenly the floor is alive with moans of betrayal.  The curtains dance in the moonlight and I swear I hear them say:

“Just go back to sleep.”

See, there is a hollow emptiness in the walls.  It swallows the words and they seem to crawl across the pillow to whisper their sentiments into my ear.  One by one, on weak legs, they tremble into my thoughts falling hard.

It is quiet then.

She is gone.

So we begin to feel.  Her in her place and I in mine.  We try to bring life to words that rang hollow with repetition.  We conclude with all of these post-lapserian assurances that repetition breeds familiarity and truth.  Then we wonder: how might it be that when our fingertips touch steel our hearts grow cold?  How might it feel: another’s hand tangled with our own, fingertips searching for life, searching for a pulse.  Where did that heartbeat come from?  It is a heartbeat, a pulse racing, and a million thoughts that ring like a chorus of voices.

Siren songs.

We are the ocean vast, immovable and constantly changing.

In those quiet moments we pick up the pieces.  We lay them out on the table and begin the process of creating something to believe in.  Because the inquisitive love seeks to solve the puzzle.  Our hands tremble as they work to pick up pieces, gray and empty, to create a moment that needs no words.  We build with glue and tape, brimstone and fire, worth and worthlessness, sand and water, careless-broken-faith thoughts and longing-to-be-free notions.  We build in secret.  You in your place and I in my own.  We build in secret and wait for the sun to reveal it all.  Like the lighthouse on a cold dark night.  And just before the sun we extinguish the lamp and begin to wander again.  We wake up.

We wake up.  Or at least we think we wake up.  We pick up our hearts from where we left them in cardboard boxes on floors of closets, under beds and hidden away in sock drawers.  We pick them up with caring tender hands.  We wrap them in cloth and take them somewhere that we might marvel at their fragility.  We take them somewhere to marvel at their power to interact with another and change ones entire world.

You see she was building a sandcastle on the shore…to guard her heart.  Because a storm was coming.  Her pulse needed protection.  Because we all fear the feeling associated with drowning.

She said the castle would be mine to guard.

I have a secret, and I think it could make us beautiful.

But we turn back.  Hearts wrapped in whatever we have left.  We place our hands upon that rough hewn sea wall and try to find sure footing in the dunes.  We try to find home but keep moving backwards.  Back into dark rooms, creaking floors, dancing curtains, empty closets, dusty open boxes, sock drawers rearranged, and prayers left hanging on bedposts and ceiling fans.