Sunrise on Venice Beach

The night we slept on the beach was the first night in the weeks of that trip that nightmares hadn't woken me before five a.m. I woke feeling light and fresh. The sun had just begun to creep the horizon behind us, giving the sea a pink hue in the distance, and the air was cool and crisp. The sound of the waves seemed to rock my entire body from the inside and I smiled. I slid out from under the damp blankets, grateful that the condensation hadn’t reached my clothing. My bare toes dug into cool damp sand and I pulled my sweater tighter. 

Patrick didn't stir as I stood as stretched and I glanced back down at him, struck by the way he looked in slumber. Gone were the angry lines that coursed his features, no trace of the harshness that seemed to plague our waking lives these days. I knew it could be seen in me, even in slumber, for I could always feel it upon waking. But this morning it seemed to have abandoned Patrick in search of greater wars. I fought the urge to reach down and stroke his cheek, afraid to wake him and discover once more what demons would join him in the daylight. 

I puffed out my breath and skipped off toward the surf. A lone family was setting up early in a bid to beat the morning onslaught of other tourists, half a mile from us, the only other people for as far into the distance as I could see. Two little girls in matching swimsuits had already set about the important business of collecting shells and I smiled, remembering a photograph I had of my sister in I in our own matching swimsuits, frolicking in the waves while my mother stood by laughing, holding the hem of her sundress out of the surf. 

I kicked at the tide, bending to gather my own broken shell chips and tucking them into the hem of my sweater. At the lifeguard tower I stopped and dropped down into the sand, staring out at the sea. The blackness of it scared me. How the top of the water turned to crystal with the peaking of the sun now and how if you looked very closely it was still as black as death. I lined the shell pieces along the sides of the ramp-way, placing them small to large, a colorful contrast against the teak wood. 

Patrick came and joined me then. He sat beside me, blessedly quiet in this reverent silence of mine, and picked up a pink shell, turning it over to examine it. The only shell that had been mostly in-tact. I looked up at him and smiled.

"I wish it could always be like this," I whispered, and as I leaned into him he put his arm around me and we watched the sea turn red then purple then black again as the sun continued to rise.