Carmen

Looking out the window of my Mom's station wagon as we headed North west, Labor day fading from view, I murmured her name, just loud enough to vibrate on my lips, a tangible thing, as if her kiss was still with me.

I was sure that she was the sweetest flower ever to grace Cleveland county, an angel with the softest skin and the sweetest smelling hair, sent to me from the foothills. Her smile was a warm place on a cold day, her laughter like silver strands of tinsel floating delicately to the ground.

I think of her now with the nostalgic indifference that 25 years and true love will warrant, trying to recall her face. But for that summer, for those three weeks, my 15 years of sagely wisdom spoke to me of breathless oaths sworn in desperate fumbling embraces that would span the very ocean that crashed at our feet.

Hand-in-hand, we shared declaration and devotion, awkward teenage kisses with a narcotic value that made our hearts race and our pulses quicken, witnessed only by the cold rising stars of late August, and the scuttling white crabs ghosting past break and dune, running away from the rising Myrtle Beach tide.