There’s a free beach somewhere close to here, where everyone’s covered in sand. And everyone knows that sand is time, or time is sandy, and all the barriers are striped, red and white, like Christmas candy. But no-one’s there. They couldn’t find the rhyme for fun hiding in their pocket money. There’s only the space where they ate spun sugar, then floated off the boardwalk after their snack. Now, open palms in the endless season of these audacious empty spaces shiver, wave. And now, you can find out what it is the dead sea craves: for you to wade in and let your eyes sting in its salted buoyancy. To watch the sky change as you float on your back, from blue to grey to silver to black.
Prose by Joan Fleming