Cigarette Stains

The sun set hours ago but the water is still warm against my toes. I sit with my toes curled in the sand just in front of the warm water. It is salty and temperamental and with every wave I think for sure this is the one that is going to drown me.

My lips are chapped and sting as the harsh winds blow the salty night air in my face making it impossible for me to see. My hips are bruised and it feels like a million hands are pressing down on the tender bones. Holding me down and waiting for me to drown.

I sit with my knees at my chest and a cigarette between my teeth watching what I once thought was the most magical place in the world turn before my eyes. When I was a kid my dad would take me to the beach every Sunday afternoon in summer, because it was free. And we never had much money then. He was a struggling writer with a young daughter he couldn’t afford to feed some nights. He would build wonderful sand castles with me and tell me he could out swim me any day, we would race and he always let me win.

After my dad published his first novel we stopped going to the beach, we could afford to go anywhere. Only we never did because he was always away. And I was left with my grandmother who was too frail to ever take me to the beach.

When I was thirteen I had my first kiss here, right on the pier with Nicholas Tommins, the cutest boy in my class. He had tasted like cheese pizza and soft drink and he had never spoken to me again. I had spent many nights on the boardwalk sure my heart had broken. It wasn’t, I learnt quickly when another boy kissed me and I saw fireworks.

When I was fifteen I would come here after school with my friends and watch the older boys without their shirts surf. We would gossip and imagine which boy would be our husband. Now I sit alone in the cold night with a cigarette at three in the morning because I don’t sleep anymore. And for some sick reason the beach, the place where my life started and ended is the only place that can relax me.

I lay back stretching out my tired legs and stare at the night sky, in all its beauty I almost forget. I almost for a second forget that under this moon, on this very beach I lost everything. The moon shines on the water and I want to follow it. I want to walk in the water until I reach the moon and can hold it in my hands.

I close my eyes and take the burning cigarette from my lips; I want to set each grain of sand on fire. I want to sit back and watch the very place I love and hate so violently disappear behind flames and smoke. I want to walk away and never look back, to this beach where everything changed.

But I don’t, I lay on the sand counting the stars above me. I think when I reach two hundred I will leave, go home and sleep. Two hundred seems like a good number, but like every night two hundred comes and goes and I don’t leave until my skin is purple and I am so tired I can barely drive.

I stay until I start to remember what happened that night under these very stars and moon. They look different tonight, like they couldn't hurt a fly. But I know better.

I know better.