The summer where my head rose above the waves for the first time as i played in the water.
That day that my sister and i found the turtle sitting in the sand that wouldn’t move, even when we poked it with an old stick.
We could see the cream colored maggots crawling all over the blackened skin that sat inside the moss-covered shell.
Mama yelled at us not to touch it, but all we could hear was the squawking of the seagulls as they swarmed over our heads.
I wanted to take it home with me and keep it in a jar, but i had nothing to pick it up with.
It smelled like when we would pass by the cow farms in the car, on our way to visit grandma.
That was back then, when she would bake us oatmeal cookies and sing us lullabies at bedtime.
Back when she was still alive, before she ended up like that turtle in the sand.
That was the last summer we spent at the beach.