June 2024 Flash Lit 7.2 - Peach

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

 

I do not think that they will sing to me.

 

--The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

 

 

“Don’t…” Althea started.  Then she stopped.  It was too late anyway.  Timmy and Davy had already kicked several pints of sand onto the red plaid beach blanket.  She hoped that there was some nutritive value to sand because they were all going to have some in their systems after this.

 

She’d packed adorable lunches for both boys, open-faced sandwiches—that was ironic, now that they had actual sand in them—spread with cream cheese and smiling faces made with blueberry eyes, strawberry nose, and peach slice smile.  She filled cupcake liners with more blueberries and goldfish like bubbly pools.  She sprinkled a graham cracker crumb beach on top of their yogurts and garnished them with gummy starfish. 

 

But the boys were totally uninterested in sitting to eat.  Davy had yogurt in his hair.  Timmy’s face had a gummy starfish on one cheek like a fancy beauty mark.  They ran and dug and paddled and yelled and splashed.  They took bites of food, sips of water, everything seasoned with sand and salt.

 

She let her Instagram-worthy picnic plan fill up with hot air rising from the beach.  She watched it float over the sunbleached heads of the two little boys, up and up and up.  The boys laughed, running toward her, Timmy clutching a perfect sand dollar and Davy trailing kelp.  She let the balloon of expectations float away.

 

Late in the afternoon, the boys crashed into the shade of the umbrella, sleeping in a sticky, gritty, coconut smelling pile. 

 

Althea got out her own lunch, neglected until now.  She bit into her own peach and pretended it didn’t taste like sand.