BROWSE Columns
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At dusk my bare feet stray
towards flat, welcoming waves,
continuous carpets unfolding
in the purple light, and I twist
towards the same ocean
that swept a boy out
in a rip current this morning, head bobbing
then gone, bobbing then
gone, and all was calm and sun-drenched
as a middle-aged woman
called emergency services,
as a man swam out
with a flotation device and
the current then clutched tight to both of them,
as a first responder
paddled a large board through the waves, as
the wind blew strong and salty and
the three clutched the board and
we saw their heads drift slowly closer to shore, and as
a jet ski flashing blue lights
sped from the other side of the island
to pull them the last stretch, the boy
carried out prone on the board,
checked over, heaving orange onto the sand,
and when I leave the beach, now dark and deserted,
I follow tire tracks from the ambulance
back to the access point
and before heading inside, spray the grains from my feet.
Camille McCarthy lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Her work has been published in the Great Smokies Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, Still: the Journal, and Absynthe Magazine, among others. She was a finalist for the 2023 Sally Buckner Emerging Writers’ Fellowship and a winner of Carolina Woman Magazine’s 2023 Annual Writing Contest.
