'Lullaby'

We ate our fill of the evening, watching the sun descend into the horizon as we were sitting in the sand. While breaking peanuts to feed each other, I had wanted to tell her that the sound of the waves reminded me of the mechanical lull of an old clanking electrical fan that had tethered my body to sleep during the days of my childhood. But I had only kept mum, chewing the peanuts that she had palmed up to my mouth and enjoying it.

More and more people had started coming to the beach as it got dark.

The sea breeze made us linger a little longer than we had intended.

After we had decided to walk back to the main road, I collected all the snack wrappers in a plastic bag for disposal. She stood up, dusted off the sand from her jeans, and slid her feet into her sandals, wiggling her toes into the straps.

Babe, I said to her, Look at the moon, and it was just so round and bright that the landscape around us changed under its light. What day of the month is it again? She smiled and said, You know, and then she moved closer to me and I could put an arm around her and when we walked the waves were breaking upon the shore, and when we kissed it was sweet, and the sky was cloudless with its stars staring back down at us, every single one of us.