Silhouette

The man shielded his eyes from the low sun and scanned his new horizon. Late afternoon and the beach was already deserted. He lay back and pressed a head-shaped hollow in the sand. Behind his closed lids heat dots swam left to right chasing those tiny threads that look like life-forms under a microscope. Travelling light was liberating, credit card, toothbrush, tousled hair.

The kaleidoscope of swirling light made him giddy so he opened his eyes and stared vertically at the deep blue zenith. A silver needle, almost too small to see, grazed the high cobalt in silence. He remembered the noisy jets which dropped from the clouds near his home, by contrast they scored the sky like nails on a chalk board. Several minutes elapsed while he allowed his focus to lengthen to infinity. Thoughts shrank to notions as his mind steadily emptied. He liked this process.

Relaxed and calm, he propped himself up on elbows. The ocean was a flat mirror, blinding in its intensity. He squinted hard and thought he could make out the upper half of a cruise liner, buried partly beyond the earth’s curvature.

Suddenly his focus pulled to the foreground and fixed on a head and shoulders emerging from the water. He reduced his gaze to slits and saw a slim torso with long arms wading slowly from the mercury sea. In the shallows, slender legs were revealed and their stride became easier. Now he sat upright half smiling, half frowning. The huge setting sun made a sharp silhouette of his visitor as she crossed the sand to him, ocean water dripping from long, long hair. Her languid motion brought her smoothly to within a few inches. The man looked up into her shadowy face ringed by sunlight, “Jo?” He ventured…

… she smiled sweetly.

And he cruised on the weekends just to be seen
And they all made fun of him yelling, "…where's Josephine?"Slobberbone - Josephine