To stand and stare was all I could do, arrested by such emptiness after months in the city; in my hand I felt the shells we held as children, their rims bone-smooth, across their backs a bite of barnacles. The wind brought waves up from the shore just as those shells once whispered lonesome stories and above went a gull without even waving a wing. I watched until it became a white speck against the glimmering empty sea and wondered which, solitude or searching, provided its impetus.
©James Bruce May, 2015
Shared Snippets 