Sand still in our ears, proof of our escape and inattention to detail in the shower. I think about reaching to wipe it out of the small tunnels leading to thoughts untold, mostly due to his lack of vocabulary at age one. I settle for grunts and screams and the dreaded wail, often feeling like an interpreter to a language no one really knows. I leave the evidence of our getaway, resisting temptation to pick as mother’s like to do. 

It is a small reminder of possibility in the year that feels like a dead end. Each grain of sand will slowly release it’s hold and eventually find its way closer to home—up the vacuum, emptied to trash, carried to dump, back to the earth. Nothing as glamorous as a beach retirement—surely the goal of most particles of glass and grit. 

But perhaps a few other bits of beach will be waiting wherever our tag-alongs go. Stories exchanged about whose toe went where, or what it's like to slide down a cheek on the back of a tear. 

The adventures of sand—unknown but only imagined.