In the room she found the flat sun lying down next to him, the splattering of streaks glinting off the waffle headed nails, and his nails so still that it was easy to see that they ended his fingers. The old wood waxed floor was worn from the lost decades of hand polishing, and as if there were some sort of symbiotic relationship, his hands were worn dull against the luster of the glossy floor.
In those few lit seconds of pure emotional tide, when thoughts get locked behind reality, and the waves pull you down with no way back, and you get stuck in the sand of the shore forever more. She knew as she began to curl her body around him, trying to wash away that wave of death off his back. Her yellowish brown seaweed hair floated above him as if it were grazing on the salt water of the foam. Maybe by hovering over him her waves of life would break against his skin, and bring the tide back in one last time, just long enough to say I love you, and I’ll miss you so. But she knew once a wave breaks onto the ground and sprawls across the plank of life, the water can no longer recede, the water can no longer rise. Good bye is just a dream. They fell in love in this very room sixty one years ago yesterday. She struggled back against her tears, able to rise and sit in the corner floral chair where she spent so many evenings watching him, joking with him, and enjoying how much he loved waxing that beautiful floor, with those beautiful hands. When the coroner arrived at the little quaint beach house, the police had already been there for some time. The coroner surveyed the room and asked the officer “got any idea which one died first? As they stood there quietly looking out the beach front windows they could here the waves breaking onto the shore, and for a second the police officer realized the irony of the situation. He thought to himself, I wonder if her heart broke with the wave.
