The Water Underneath Shimmers

There's an old bridge in the bay and it is the evening. The bridge itself is broken and separated into large decaying parts. It is white and in odd corners, rusts red and orange. Old, almost prehistoric, long-winged birds nest here. The water underneath shimmers silver and there are a few boats scattered all around with tall white sails that whip in the breeze of the cool wind. I am standing on an island watching it all. My arms are folded and I shift my weight casually from side to side. To my left there is a group of seven or eight people. There is a father and atop his head he is wearing a cardboard crown that is cut-out into a red glittery '50.' All around him his family dances and laughs loudly and no one else dares quiet them. A boy my age, possibly the father's son, is holding a tall steel-green bottle and everyone else comes to him with tall narrow plastic flutes. Champagne is poured generously, and occasionally foams over the edge of a flute and drips onto peoples' pants and shoes. They then stumble awkwardly, in an almost dance between and off big staggering black rocks. They all laugh and I can't help but smile. We are all standing here, on these rocks, and as we do we choose to forgive and forget the never-ending incomplete sweep of life. And as we do, the bridge disappears into the  twilight of a looming night as the sails of all the boats below glow white with the reminder that the moon still shines and that all whispers, like lies, still live.


-Remoy