I stand in the shower and watch the sand dissipate from my feet. It is already the evening, and we have sat in the sun for hours, sipped enough beers to get an army drunk, and yet walked through the market overflowing with trinkets only to get back into the flat that we get to call our own for a few days. This air of degeneration and aloofness all around me has made me feel so content I now see why some of my friends were pushed to the extreme end of sitting with their hands idle and their minds full of useless hay. I now see it all because I, too, am compelled to do the same. Sitting today, staring at the sea under the golden sun, napping before I knew it, and waking up only to find the off-white embrace of the entire scene in front of me made me feel extreme complacency. I remembered all this just now when I took a shower and washed the sand off my feet. All my friends are asleep, too, and I sit here thinking I will be twenty-seven years old in a few hours.
Today, a hawker approached our deckchairs while lost in the aether. She had some necklaces made of rocks and beads. “For your girlfriend or sister?” She said. “I don’t have either,” I said, “I am as loveless as you might imagine, even more.” I laughed and said, “No, I don’t need it, thank you”, and then she left, walked to the adjacent set of chairs in the adjoining shack and continued her pitch, hoping to sell something. I forgot about what she looked like in that second or that she existed, not because of apathy but because I was utterly lost in whatever I could find in the blank sky. I only remembered her when the sand slipped away from my feet, over the toes, along the scar I do not remember receiving. In fact, I placed all of today in that second, and then, I came out of the shower and took another beer out of the refrigerator.
There it is; this is how I need to be tonight. I cannot remember I have no one to buy overpriced necklaces for. Not today, no. Today is not a day to remember but to forget. I will walk into tomorrow with a freshly wiped slate, as we always intend when the year turns over a new leaf. We tell ourselves things will be different, but they are the same eventually in different ways.