I contemplate my choices - up into the soft, pillowy dunes covered in seagrass, into the rough brush beyond, down to the slippery water rocks. I walk along it all, past the rocks pock-marked like skulls, that I place precariously on the spindly end of a gnarled, whitewashed log that I foot. I pass pieces of wood petrified in the sand like emerging snakes, spiny, drowning spiders. The sand is chalked clay, clumps creating mini Stone Henges where deer prints have broken it. In the distance are fragile lines of birds that sound like howling wolves. I look out over the water, the sea that wiggles between my toes and spans the horizon all at once. The water laps at my thoughts and in between breathes I hear my cousin calling me. I turn towards her hungover dreamless nap, but still I hear the sea, refreshing my mind and the sun cleansing and lifting me up into the very sky. My feet break the salt-cracked sand back. The path I took before breaks out and unfolds before me like a red carpet on tracing paper and I avoid every step like it would break my mother's back.
