Sea Shells

She sells sea shells, by the sea shore.

He says, “Well, that’s dumb. People could just go out there on the beach and pick them up for free.”

She ignores him, because he really does know nothing. He’s in the way, under her feet – does he want to go for a walk, or go inside and watch the game or something?

He isn’t there in the mornings when she leaves the house early, when she walks across the sand, along to the rockpools, when she chooses shells carefully, turning them around in her fingers, holding them up to the new, clean light, thinking about what she might do with them, where they might fit, with what.

There’s some of her in those shells, in what she creates with them, stringing them together for necklaces or wind-chimes; placing them into the centre of what will fill with beads and ribbons and some oven-baked modelling clay to become a brooch; sticking them carefully onto boxes, or pots, or canvas to form patterns – sometimes mingling with stones, or lace, or wool, or wood. She cleans and polishes her shells and gives them life, gives them family, finds a place in the world for them. If she can: a home.

So there. That’s how much he knows.

She spares a moment to give him a withering look, as a woman in a thick, grey coat stops to pick one of her creations up and turn it to face the light.

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work