COLLECTED ALONG THE WATER
A walk beside the sea rarely goes in a straight line.
Neither does this notebook.
I took the path behind the boat sheds. Someone had swept the steps but left a neat crescent of sand at the bottom. The tide was out far enough to expose the green on the last two rungs of the ladder.
At the corner, the path split. One side led to the road; the other followed the wall for another ten minutes. I followed the wall. A pair of shoes sat on a bench, facing the water, with no one beside them.
One flat stone. A piece of pale green glass, worn smooth at the edges. A shell with a hole almost exactly in the centre. I laid them on the windowsill and left the sand in my coat pocket.
In the evening light the glass looked nearly colourless. The stone had a white line running around it that I had missed on the beach. The shell stayed exactly as it was.
The far end of the bay disappeared first. Then the boats lost their shadows. I closed the notebook when the first drops made little dark circles on the page.
Under the shelter, three people watched the same patch of water. No one spoke. A dog shook itself beside the bench, and that settled the silence.