a moment, this summer

I think this is what life is about. It's not about talking, it's not about talking about talking, or about or knowing everything. It's about enjoying the evening like this – sitting at the end of the pier in late August and watching the smooth bumps on the lake and the city lights just beginning to strike out against the pink sky. Taking turns reading aloud from a book while our tennis shoes bounce off the cement. And it smells like a lake and a beach – for the first time this season you smell it. The air is warm and light and it carries the smell of sea gulls and life in a shell. As the sun falls even farther we skip stones into the small shore waves. We fill our hands with flat stones. Flat stones forever. Flat stones collected by way of the water like a pathway down the beach. If I walked it forever I'd be happy. Instead we head back across the sand, our pants rolled up, to the park and the streets and the night.