The shot was fired

before I realized there was even a gun.

I was too late,

Everything had been said and done.

And I stood, frozen.

Watching the repercussions unfold

like crumbling sandcastles:

falling apart slowly, grain by grain.

Once strong, but broken by the unrelenting tide,

as vicious as the cruellest of dictators.  

Parasitic insects are gnawing at my insides,

the guilt and the remorse and the sadness

mixing together into one amorphous cloud

of regret.  

If I could turn back time,

make the seconds unwind and the hours come back,

un-say the words and undo the actions,

I’d welcome the time with open arms.

The salty breeze whistles quietly,

serenity before a storm.

A little girl builds a castle,

with towers of jagged rocks and seashells,

bridges of stringy seaweed.

I call out to her again and again and again, but

my voice is hoarse and lost in the gushing wind.

She cries as the wave hits, a haunting sound across the expanse.

Her castle crumbles, grain by grain.

For a moment, she crumbles too.

Then she rebuilds.