Stone Fruit

By: Charlie Midstrip. Calloused toes kick hazes of sand around the blur of our sprint. Whoops and screams cast into the oily slaps of the ocean waves, a deep catharsis. Picking our way around glistening stones of vibrant colors.   It’s a simple enough idea. Eight friends eat hippie food and chill in the rich, Norcal breeze. Laughter ensues, fires are lit, children get casually lost in the fog, clothes are strewn every which way as we almost freeze to death in the empty sea.   Like sinking our teeth into a peach. A united, primal breath. A skipped heartbeat that is naked and dumb and together. This is a day that changes things.   We swaddle ourselves in a thermal, nylon polyester blend, and play ‘Who’s hand is that?’ until we erupt into a staccato lullaby of soft snores and flatulence.   We pile out of the car, we fall through the bramble, a stumble into a vast crest, where water meets sand, where flower petal meets rough canyon, and we run.   It’s an adolescent struggle. Unhooking our past selves, letting loose that insecure part of us all, and slipping into something a bit more comfortable. Like dust, and sun. We throw ourselves to the surf, a throng of torso, Immersed in sea foam and pink chill, guttural laughter and reverberating wind.   He tosses a piece of driftwood into the waves, and insists that it represents our past selves. It’s metamorphosis, I swear. The piece of wood washes back to shore a minute later, showing what is never lost, and that the tide doesn’t retreat.   A chain of glinting grins jointed by the scruff of our necks, our fur matted with the ocean sludge, we are primal, we are in love, with chattering teeth, with salty hair, with thunderous childhood, with the thought, I am full.