the beach

thoughts of the past inadvertently find their way into my bouts of reflection; they’re a potent cocktail of yearning and regret. i don’t think there’s an English word for it — i haven’t found its foreign, untranslatable variant. it’s a feeling of watching life passing gently, like running your palm through the beach and watching the sand slip through your fingers. you can hold on as much and as tightly as you want, but it makes no difference. the pigeons will continue to caw, the trees sway in the wind, and the sea will recede, before rushing forward, only to recede again.