Ebbs and Flows

Ebbs and Flows




Baby’s Girls thoughts turned cobalt, then translucent. As she sits admiring sassafras sand and the cranberry ocean watching balmy waves, something inside shifts, left becomes more center, noises lift and separate like silver apparitions, until she only hears crashing sea tides and her purring heart. Baker Beach was a refuge, no an oasis, a place, a moment where she feels safe, and yet, twenty minutes East, and she was in the thick of concrete jungles merging with a cacophony of others. She called them others in that those people, those aliens, did not inhabit her world and universe. What had happened the night previous? The Tuxedo had delivered her, the rose, to her door, had scotched lips against the nape of her neck, had begged earnestly, like some silly school boy who had pulled her hair, to come up to her quarters, to sweep her to her bed, make love to her harmoniously, tilting the crescent moon on its ear. She acquiesced. The truth – she had wanted his custard love to fill her, like helium in a balloon, to make her walk on air unafraid and unashamed. So “yes” she had said, her rose lipstick caressing his mouth, his cheeks, wherever, he would allow her to roam. And inside, inside where it was hot and sticky, creamy and floating, inside was where he was granted permission, his passion merciless, she gave in, allowing someone else to steer. And so it had been, and so he had slipped out, after cerulean promises and insincere affectations, slipped away while her silken auburn hair enveloped her in her sleep, slipped away into a shadow, into a parallel world, one where she had not been invited, not been included, where she had simply been shut out. The tide ebbs and flows, stealing the sand as it leaves, returning to tumble abandoned sand castles, and depositing fragmented shells, battered and bruised, leaving her right where Tuxedo had left her the night previous, completely, devastatingly alone to sift through amber winds, citrus heat, and granite thoughts, a place she knows better than most, a place that cost her much, a place that failed to leave the most meager of tips, and one that sold her soul to black market thieves.