Campus Canvas

Driftwood
Alexandra Wong  '12

You won't remember this, but one balmy summer afternoon we were writing poems on driftwood. We scanned the beach for the last of summer's bonfires, bending down to sort through the ashy piles to find charcoal. The beach was long and the sand was dry, and there were seagulls after your lunch. You had made an egg and tuna sandwich on rye because we didn't have any whole wheat left. The mayonnaise had escaped and your plastic baggy was coated by the time it left your backpack. I got out a plastic knife from my purse and smoothed it in, smoothed it around. After it was cleaned up I handed it to you and you ate it in five massive bites. When you were finished I got out my day planner and noted "Whole Wheat. Lots of it."

In a few minutes you got tired of trying to compose a poem so I told you to just do a haiku or even one couplet for me. When I looked over you had drawn a seagull, with wings that looked like hands and feet that could have been forks. I was trying to write a sestina –I wanted it to sound like the rhythm of the waves, but when I asked you what it reminded you of, you said driving a convertible, so I tossed it to the water.
You took off your boating shoes and we used them as weights to keep the linen blanket from flying away. I remember seeing the tongue of the shoe with the little 10.5 M stamped onto the top, and imprinting onto the insides of my eyelids. It's funny now, thinking back to it.

Your birthday was coming up in September and I remember having a page in the Eaton's catalogue dog-eared. I had been eyeing a pair of bedroom slippers for you, the waffled cotton kind with the cream stitching and rounded toe. But this was all around the same time I thought romance meant having matching bathrobes.

Eventually you threw the driftwood to the side and it jammed itself into the sand. Unzipping your satchel you took out some papers and starting flipping through a packet annotated in your customary way –light pencil underlining anything objective, a blue pen circling everything pertaining to the defense's side and a yellow highlighter over everything the prosecutor claimed. I asked you what it was about and you said, "The usual. People complaining." So I leant back against the log, too, and took out my legal pad, editing a screenplay that was giving me some trouble.

Your highlighter ran out of ink and you said some curse under your breath and sighed. You shut the folder and threw it down, lying down on the blanket so that you were eye level with my calves. You reached over with your ballpoint and touched it to my knee, I held my breath. You drew a square, one of the sides dipped in a little and the upper left corner didn't meet, so it looked like a piece of toast. When the little metal ball left my skin, it left ink that bled through the wrinkles on my knee, snaking little blue rivers.

After the water had changed from golden to cobalt, you took your shoes and slipped them on and marched back to the car. Propping up a map of the coast in the dashboard against the window, you fell asleep in the driver's seat, your straw fedora covering your face. The linen blanket flew wildly around without your boating shoe to anchor it so I folded it up and placed it between my back and a log instead. I recovered your piece of driftwood from its temporary grave and blew off the sand. The impact of its landing had rubbed off part of the head and a leg, leaving one vapid eye to balance on feathers that looked like hands and a single leg that stood stiff like a fork jabbed into a kitchen table.

After taking a long bath that night the square on my knee had faded. I traced it over again with a pen, it's makes my face warm to think of this all again. I did that for the entire summer, redrawing that blue square on my knee after each washing so it looked like I was displaying a little piece of toast with each step.

Eventually, you took your boating shoes and straw fedora and packed them up with your legal papers and yellow highlighters and left. Later, when I found myself tracing a square onto my body, I'd rub it off with spit and a fingertip, until the spot was red and sore.
I bet whoever you're with now doesn't remember to buy you whole wheat bread. I hope she throws away any sandwiches that make a mess. Maybe you drive to the coast only to nap in the front of the car together, you probably don't even get out. I bet you don't even make it to the beach.