Your Pretty Blue Sundress

The beach’s sand is white, grainy, and pure. It darkens as the tide rushes up to greet it, then runs back down again, frightened. There are so many things to be scared of these days, but at the moment, we’re safe in this sandy haven.

You walk along the shore line, barefoot and careless. The sand is chilly underneath our toes. It’s barely light out; the sky is pastel blue and purple and streaked with violet. It’s beautiful and sad at the same time. The first shy rays of sunlight are starting to peek out from behind clouds, casting upon your face. It lights you up, makes you look holy and golden in a time of despair and ruin.

The first bomb goes off and you look up towards the pastel purple sky. You smile and strip off the lacy white sweater that was covering your shoulders, tossing it into the sand beside my feet.

“Come into the water,” you say softly. Ash is falling from the sky. It lands in your ink-black hair, catches onto your faded blue sundress. Is this how it will end, catching up to us at this quiet, whitewashed sanctuary?

I stand up and edge toward the water. Another bomb goes off, a resounding boom that shakes the earth. The bombs are getting closer and this isn’t something to fool around with, yet you’re not taking anything seriously. You’re bending over a tidal pool, turning over shells under the water with your graceful white fingers.

I look at you nervously. “Shouldn’t we be going? They’re coming, Gabrielle, they’re getting closer. We need to leave.”

“You don’t understand,” you say in your soft voice. “Roman, look at this starfish.”

I look at the starfish like you asked. It looks vulnerable, spread-eagled at the bottom of the pool. I wonder if the bombs will kill it, too, like they’re sure to kill us if we don’t start moving.

The hem of your blue, faded floral sundress is wet and caked in sand. One more bomb goes off, and it’s not so far in the distance anymore. It’s close, and we both know it. Ash falls from the sky like rain and catches onto the tip of your nose like snowflakes.

“They’re too close, Gabrielle, let’s leave. Now.” I try to sound urgent, but you just look dreamy, almost like you don’t care that we’re about to die.

You shake your head, making raven-colored curls cascade down your shoulders and clash against your pretty blue sundress. “Even if we had the fastest car in the world, they’d catch up to us, Roman,” you say quietly, tucking your hair back behind your ear and looking up at me with clear, ocean-colored eyes. “You have to understand. This is the end. It’s fate, it’s karma, it’s destiny. Call it what you like, but this is the end.”

“But… why does it have to be?” I ask urgently. “Why can’t we fight?”

“You don’t fight with destiny. How long, really, did we think we could get away with bombing other countries and stealing their oil, their exports, their lifeblood, without them fighting back?” You kneel in the dry white sand, sinking into it, and sigh, your chest lilting up and down gracefully. “Don’t you think, in some way, that we deserve it?”

“I think that everyone deserves to live and have peace.”

You look at me sadly. Your face, which was always so clear and youthful, looks lined and faded in the pastel sunlight. “If everyone deserves to live and be peaceful,” you ask in a soft voice, “why did we bomb them in the first place?”