“Are you gonna sweep that up?” I ask, as she tracks sand onto my welcome mat.
“It’s the ocean’s fairy dust,” she says, and smiles with sunshine caught in her teeth.
That night she takes off her coverup like a selkie shedding her skin. There are no scales underneath but I swear when the ocean speaks it speaks only to her.
“Do you hear voices in the wind?” I ask her the following morning as I watch her close her eyes and hear the gulls and the breeze and the slow changing of the world.
“Sometimes,” she says, “but I mostly just hear you snoring.”
I laugh and pull her close as I fall asleep on a damp towel with her sandy legs pressed against mine. Her hair smells of salt and her lips are softer than the smooth stones she collects.
“These are my treasures,” she called them.
“They’re just rocks.”
“If you think like that you’ll never understand,” her voice is gentle, like sunlight in early spring.
But she always says that and I always want to ask understand what but I don’t. Instead, I walk along the shore and wait for the waves to tell me how I could have gotten so lucky.
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