No life lived to flash before his eyes,
every experience still new to his senses.
No fear of the dark held beneath the sea,
just a boy, a buoy caught in the wake
of much larger vessels,
every destination still new and unknown.
The red shirt picked out by his father,
worn like the promise of freedom,
wet, it turned the color of blood,
tiny hands curled to cradle an empty sky.
The hard-packed sand a shimmering bed
of waves that whisper and then recede,
a beach absent of his footprints.
~JS
