I Can Still Taste the Strawberries

watermelon friends

     I could taste the citrus of the sunrise. My friends in the sheets next to me were still breathing heavily with sleep. The windows of our beach house were dripping with translucent joy, and the light came though telling us, "good morning! Welcome to today!"

The air outside smelled fresh and was humid, carrying the presence of the ocean with it. The morning tasted like watermelon. Sweet and alive. We spent our watermelon of a morning slathering on sunscreen and gripping the sand in our toes.

The joy of the salt water melted into our skin and made our hair wave back at us; and the ocean picked us up and put us back down, over and over again.

Someone who is Incomprehensible was sinking into the sand, and sinking even further into a book. Someone who is Extraordinary, and I, danced with the ocean until the sun showed us it's sleepy colors.

It slept through the night, but the taste of watermelon was still alive and on our lips when the scent of books welcomed us. We got ourselves lost in a forest of pages and every now and then I would take a turn that would lead me back to Extraordinary.

She was every beautiful feeling you could feel, all at once, and you could see it on the surface. Her face was joy, and beautiful, and it had been kissed by the sun.

Incomprehensible never failed to keep me from knowing what she was thinking. She seemed to express one constant, plane-jane emotion, which was happy-contentment. But not even she could hide her joy underneath her mask of constant happiness.

Incomprehensible found a vinyl, Extraordinary found a book, and I found some colored pencils; but we all found a home. That place called out our names with every gust of humid ocean wind.

We could barely hear each other over the music in our heads. The song that said, "lightning in a bottle." The sound echoed into our dreams and played again when the sun woke us up in the morning, reminding me that they were my lightning in a bottle.

After every watermelon morning, a bike would take us to meet the ocean.

They were a perfect picture on their bikes, going in circles for fun, letting the humid ocean air ripple through their beach waves.

All the days after that one, we continued to dance with the ocean, and let the sun kiss us one by one.

Telling the saltwater goodbye stung like getting it in your eyes, and the sunrise early that morning of leaving wasn't the same citrusy sun that woke us up.

But the watermelon, sweet and alive, made me remember, and the lightning in a bottle, kept me from forgetting.