| Resolution |
| At the end of the pier the boards were loose. Sunlight glinted off the water below the planks where I stood, where cracks opened up like fault lines, huge fissures that served as windows to the ocean. I shrugged and tossed my cigarette away. He shrugged that last time, in the restaurant where boards now block up the windows. They served coffee with no cream that tasted like water. He took his dignity and left, saying, "It's all your fault." He left nothing but an empty cup at the counter where I stood. And maybe it was me, I thought now, staring. I stood him up too many times, laughed and shrugged at the way his eyes slanted up in anger. Faulty judgment stacked up in my head like rotting boards. I tried not to let feelings seep through, but watery tears brimmed up in my eyes and flushed them out. Served on a platter come our just desserts, I thought, served right alongside the places where we stood to make our mistakes. There was no water running through my veins that night, as I tried to shrug off my past and staggered over the boards of this same pier, miserable and drunk to a fault. I didn't remember about the fault lines in the outermost planks. My memory served me poorly through intoxication, and the baords gave way uinderneath my feet. I stood up after a moment of thrashing in the waves and shrugged off a string of seaweed, gooey and dripping with salt water. Sober now, I could barely remember the feel of the water, but I knew this hole in the planks was my fault. Time for one last glance, one last shrug-- a chance to tuck away an attitude that served no one well--and then I abandoned the place where I stood, leaving someone else to find the rifts between the boards. The ocean shrugged for no one; the water rolled on beneath the pier where people stood, serving as a sounding board for a lonely girl trying to find a measure of peace with her faults. |