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MEMORY, CONTEMPLATION, RETROSPECTION, AND DEATH ELEANOR SWANSON Miami Beach, Moonrise Clouds billow, full of light. The moon pours silver over black water. Solitary, I step from the beach dive underwater, follow bottom sand. Light slivers down, spangling my body nestled there, listening to the ocean, listening under moonlight. Ocean. Each syllable billows to the surface, a light, brilliant as flame. I rise, body lithe in the current, half in water, half in bright air, then I stand and feel sand shift under me as I step onto the beach. I turn from the sea toward the beach road, lined with lively hotels and Ocean Drive revelers sipping drinks, brushing sand from sun-burned legs, worshipping the neon lightdrenched beachfront, music, revving cars. Sea water smells delicious on my body. I watch, nearly motionless, a body haloed in light. I remember this beach from long ago. My brother and I, rocked by water, running through thunderstorms, running from the ocean— the place that always was and will always be. Light cast over the water, footprints in sand, shells, cigarette butts, bits of bone, hot sand blowing across our young faces, our sunburned bodies. Who would know my brother would die at twenty, light years from this night, but only minutes from this beach? A photograph might capture this moment of moonlit ocean, but as clouds drift across sky, the image diffuses: the water stills. This is the story of water, the story of memory, of the elemental, of the sand that clung to our legs and feet, bodies fresh from the ocean. Brother and sister, that death cannot separate, body that dies, memory that lives, a stretch of beach, the clouds billowing, full of light. Water, primordial, body and no-body, beach, seaside, shoreline, coast, ocean lapping the earth, memory passing into light. ...

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