palm trees on the edge of farewell

they are gathering seashells. the boy is shirtless and the girl is wearing a black dress
that exposes broad shoulders soaking up the morning light. her hair tumbles a fiery
orange down the length of her back. the same back bent with both their eyes twinkling
in furtive adventure looking to find seashells buried beneath the sand. they find tiny
white ones, large beige ones, gray ones the same shade as concrete; some cracked in
small places, some with pieces missing, some so eroded by the salt of seawater that
there is nothing to them but the skeletal frame of their disintegrating bodies. when you
know that your time with someone has almost run out, that is what you do. you look for
tiny things buried in the sand so that you do not have to look at the huge broken thing
standing between you both. they find a dozen. and still look for more. the ocean stirs
next to them, wave after wave crashing into the sandy shore, the early morning sun
kissing the water until it shines glasslike; an eternity of things we can never touch.

Mofiyinfoluwa O. is a Nigerian writer living between Lagos and London. She is a graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program and The Founder of The Abebi AfroNonfiction Institute. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Variant Lit, Pleiades, Ploughshares and elsewhere. Her work has been selected as Best American Essay Notable Entry (2022). She is currently at work on her debut memoir interrogating the body and its relationship with desire.