On Sleeping at the Beach, Posthumously

Fortunately for me, I woke up far too early that morning. I felt warm with my head underneath my sleeping bag, where I had curled up in a ball the night before. That night I had concealed my shoes underneath my bag, and when I awoke I was relieved to feel the uncomfortable lump protruding through the fabric, near my thigh. No bum had stolen it. Then I remembered I was a bum. My mind wandered to the plastic water bottle I had left near a rock, and hoped it was still there.

There wasn't much time to think though. The rain that had woken me up was still coming down. plat plat plat. My bag would be dry for another ten minutes at most. Or is it at least? At least, that gives me 9 more minutes to sleep. I beat back the idea, wiggled carefully out onto the sand, and turned my face up to the rain. My water bottle was still there.

It was 6am, the clouds were a dark blue of early dawn, and seemed to stretch well into the ocean as two pieces of fluttering paper, upset by the crashing tide. My glasses started to fog, so I took them off. I retrieved my shoes, took my backpack out of my sleeping bag where I had huddled with it the night before, and rolled up the bag. The sand around my bag had been shuffled. I wondered how much of it had already been like that and how much of it was made by me tossing around in the dark. Maybe people were walking around me, over me in the dark, mistaking me for another dead rock. I might've looked like a tombstone.

Maybe I could have stayed longer that morning, and sat down on one of the rocks nearby that didn't give me any shelter. I might've had an epiphany there, sitting in the rain, gradually feeling the wetness seep through my three sweaters. Something would have clicked, and I would have seen through the beach, sand, the waves, I would have seen through it all into something beyond, reality beyond the unreal. The truth of nature. I wish I could say this, but I don't believe it. There's nothing glorious about waking up on a rainy beach, and you have plenty of time to think about how much it might rain the next night as you make your slow, laborious way through the sand.

There was no nightingale, serenading slumber, no doves to herald the dawn. Just rain, falling on a vast graveyard.