Sapphira sets down her sand castle; it crumbles to a pyramid, then a pile, then a beach.

She splashes, just at that point where she’s in the water but not yet in a wave–the wet edges left behind by the last to wash the shore. She laughs, ebbing and flowing, delighted, a child. The river has already caught her, is even now sweeping her away.

Like the rest of us, she’ll return to the sea. Our ages are all the same. But only she will get there from this beach, this wave, this day, the homes that she comes from and these ancestors.

Now she builds her sand castles closer down, and they don’t have time to crumble before the waves catch them and each grain, like a child, is free.