#lis riley

The sky shifts through a contusion of colors—gray, black, bone, and purple, reflecting the same bruised hues in my heart. The hard alcohol, not normally to my taste but welcome for now, takes effect and loosens my neck muscles. I dig my fingers into the pebbly beach while the ocean throws itself against the cliff, time and time again. It can’t do anything different. That’s the nature of things. Sometimes you don’t get a choice in how to act.

Bran settles his head on my stomach. “This right here? My favorite place in the world.”

I release a fistful of coarse gravel and let the grains catch the wind. “Have you ever watched a sand mandala get made?”

“No.”

“Tibetan Buddhist monks visited my campus one time. They worked for a week, started in the center, moved to the periphery, drawing the most intricate geometric shapes on the ground. Then they used special funnels and scrapers to fill the image in with colored sand. I skipped so much class to watch the process. When they finished, the piece was the single-most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And then they destroyed it, ritualistically, piece by piece. So much effort for the sole purpose of being obliterated.”

Bran doesn’t say anything but his eyes never leave my face.

“Nothing stays the same, does it? I get so caught up wanting to keep life under control but that contradicts the natural order of things. Change is inevitable.”

“There are things I’m never going to let change.” Bran shifts on his side so he faces me. His cheeks are wind-burned. Impossibly, the rosiness makes his irises more jade.

“Yeah?”

He hugs my waist. “This. Me. You.”