Sandcastles



At the moment the tide recedes, these giants of crushed shells and unmade stone plead to emerge from the bubbles that the seafoam left behind. Slowly, rising from the trench that will soon become a moat, the towers form, defiant of the empty flatness in this water-ridden desert.

In handfuls they pile up, a frenzy of protuberance fulfilling the dream of a million specks clamouring to rise from their tabular state, to look down and kiss the breeze that gently pounds on their pretentions. Playfully, she whispers "You do not belong here," and convinces a few with her sirenlike voice to trickle down in sucidal lust.

The towers grow bigger now as they begin to take shape. A door, a window, a courtyard and marble steps. From sand into cement, the walls harden like callous hands; but not to stiffness, for the structure is malleable - not a collosus like the rocks of previous lives, but a payment of the karma begotten by their past unwillingness to budge.

Monuments brought down by hordes of liquid discontent, they rest swayed by the same water that once tore them apart, torn again in the humid embrace of salty oppression, ever coarser, ever finer, ever flatter in defeat.