Them

Summer

Eternity

Power

Enormous

Delicate

Urge

Rust

Like

Michael lay on the beach and listened to the waves crash onto the sand. He had been watching and listening to the sea all summer. Each wave started out as no more than a ripple, a bulge on the surface of the ocean, gradually gathering height and strength, gliding inexorably towards the shore where it gave up its power in one enormous crash, before receding, spent, back into the swirling foam.

Sometimes he had the urge to run across the hot sand and throw himself at the waves, as if he could stop them. The waves laughed at him, and teased him, bypassing his fragile, delicate body and rushing to their doom on either side of him.

Soon he would leave this place, and go back to the hot, dusty, city where people, preoccupied with their daily business, had no time to gaze at the sea. The waves would not even notice he was gone.

Michael reached over and picked up his shorts, faded and torn from his battles with the waves. The top button hung loose, dangling from a single thread. Michael pulled it off the shorts and held it in his hand. It was hot, from the sun. He stood up and faced the sea.

“Hey, here’s something to remember me by!”

He flung the button as far as he could, into the crest of an oncoming wave. The wave ignored the gift and kept coming, breaking onto the sand like its brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, and countless generations of waves before it.

As the water drained away, and pulled back down the sand, Michael saw a flash of metal, glinting in the sun. His button. It would lie there, buried in the sand, pounded by the waves, gathering rust, until he returned next year.