Driftwood Afternoon

Manly Beach shimmered around her in long strokes of light,

the kind of afternoon that makes even time slow down.

She rested on her towel with effortless ease—

hair flicked back by a passing gust,

its strands catching sparks of sun like wind-tossed gold.

 

Her tattoos mapped themselves across her skin as if the day had written its warmth directly onto her.

 

She lay among the small artifacts of a life on pause:

denim shorts, a cap, a bottle of something cold,

boots that looked like they’d walked farther than the sand suggested.

 

The beach moved around her—

distant voices, breaking waves,

a surfboard thudding softly somewhere down the shore—

but she kept her own rhythm, unhurried and calm,

as though she were driftwood the tide had chosen not to reclaim.

A single figure in the sun,

held lightly in the breath between ocean and sky.

 

Done