Mr. Flood's Last Resort

by Jess Kidd

“A pearl is an everlasting tear,” he whispers. “A swaddled hurt.”

It was a place of shifting sand, singing sand, sinking sand, hard-packed made-for-running-on sand. Sand with a sheen to it, a certain luster in the right light (moonlight, starlight, dawnlight). A long crescent swoon of a beach, even its name was magical: Pearl Strand. My sister said that when the tide was out you could walk all the way to America; the waves pulled back that far. So far that the starfish forgot there ever was an ocean and stiffened with dismay. So far that the seaweed wept itself dry on the rocks with nostalgia.