It’s really quite strange the way one’s excitement can drop as fast as the sea chases away the sand. I had always loved packing for vacations. I confided in building these intricate snow piles of material items, admiring the way my hands could shape them so neatly. Often, I became amused at these piles' biology, convincing myself that if I were to pull at these loose strings, I could discover some sort of sentient underbelly. Despite its clothy exterior, through green glasses, I conjured up myths of small, unshielded forest critters who had morphed into socks and sundresses. These critters were so vivid, I could almost hear their conversations, an unintelligible collage of languages similar to the way fairytale birds speak through flutey vocal folds, but communicating a common ground of emotion nonetheless. And in that noise, I can understand my purpose in safely holding these supposedly endangered species. Through the slow lift of a hand, they’d see how gently you carried yourself and walk upon your arm to sleep there with the trust that you’d release them back into a nearby wilderness. In embalming them in a suit-cased enclosure, they could properly hibernate from the pandemic around them, a disease only transferable to their cotton marrow. There was a relaxing electricity in strapping these inanimate pets in such a way that you knew they’d never come tumbling out, scraping their knees on their way. Keeping them safe, they’d look up at me with eyes that recognized me as their mother, and I’d smile at how, in awakening them to their new destination, their original positions would only be altered in the way humans toss and turn in their sheets.

The car ride to the beach would always offer a similar form of contentment. Looking out the windows, the sky was made of brighter and more vivacious wisps of clouds. If you narrowed your eyes at the proper angle, you could saunter through them to walk into the homes of people in the cars moving beside you, all driving by at different temperatures. Beyond the window, I’d balance my two small fingers above the landlines and let them leap across the wire, imagining their agility would power the pouring conversations to course through it. Even resting your head on tunes that had once tired themselves by bouncing too frequently in memory could now turn blood into a golden liquor that disperses its energy evenly through the body. Beneath a beached-night sky, the moon was shaped differently so that its glow persuaded each characteristic of life to behave in tranquility. But it was a tranquility that only existed in this specific glow—some supernatural glow that you’d have to melt in because you knew you would never have to fear that this glow would stop following you. From this seat of the car, all of the world rolled back behind you as if life were turning at just the right speed for your feet to sprint effortlessly, as if all of its vastness made for you to just breathe and settle.

As soon as we reached the beach house, though, my first step signaled an odd sensation. The flooring didn’t seem stained in its usual color; all of its dreamed-of light had been let out without reason. I thought maybe the floors had altered their passcode—that I’d been stepping on the wrong cracks and corners to feel that unfettering radiation open themselves up to me, but with too many possibilities of varied footwork, I left them to mutter through secrecy. Though I had been to this house so many times, the rhythm was unbalanced. Some new instruments became jumbled into the orchestration—instruments that had not even been invented to reach decibels of the human ear. I must have scared the actual house away. In my springing anticipation, the entire framework of the house must have collapsed in from the pressure and reassembled itself in a falser wood. Every wall of this home was now biting with unfamiliarity, with the atmosphere smelling of an unsettling tang that stalls your senses for straying so far from your usual soil. The silverware even seemed too abstract in shape to physically grasp and put to use. Making my way to my room, I forced myself to replay those past moments of the car ride over and over again until the vision became a mummified ball of remembrance I could only extend my arm to reach out for rather than re-live. That glow had lost its way and sickened me without any diagnosis. I had never felt so disconnected from everything and yet disconnected from nothing all at once.

As the sun began its descent down into the unknown, I began to wish I could merge with it or wished that maybe I could fall into the waves and have its salt disintegrate me back to that car, where that house could still stand in a glow. I cried that night, despite the warm, affectionate sand, despite the relaxing, salty air. I couldn’t wait to go home, and I couldn’t wait to pack.