then i was on the shore, i was in my six year old body, but i was in my head now. thin six year old arms and legs, strong and golden brown from the sun. i felt my head and my hair was short like it was back then, slicked back with salt water, i could taste the the salt water on my lips.

i had all the scars on my body that i have gotten in my life, even the ones i got after i was six.

i looked at my hand and saw the cut on my finger across the knuckle from when i cut it opening a can for my baby brother. i saw the burn mark on my forearm, from the heating pad when i was too sick to wake up from the heat. i pulled my bathing suit back and saw its sister, the burn on my hip from a heating pad during that same sick, different night. i saw the scar on the back of my wrist when a boy pushed me down for beating him in dodgeball, i felt my forehead and felt the scar i have next to my left eyebrow from when i had chicken pox.

i ran my hands over my skin, i felt how soft it was from the saltwater and sand, the way it would feel on the way home from the beach, when i was tired from swimming and the sun, when i would sit in the back of the station wagon, wrapped in my striped towel, rubbing sand out of my hair, watching as we climbed the mountain to the freeway, everyone sleepy and hungry.

i looked around the beach for my family, for the blanket laid out with our shoes and clothes, my nanny reading a book, my brother building sand castles, my sister turning cartwheels and looking for other little kids to play with. but there was no one there, i was down on my favorite beach where there were always few people, no life guards, huge rocks to climb inside, a place where you felt like you were the only one alive. and i was down there alone.

i started running. i ran up all the stairs that lead you down to that secret beach, i ran through the cut up parking lot where i once fell and got pebbles stuck in my palm. i ran to the pacific coast highway and i ran north. there were no cars, no surfers by the side of the road waxing their boards. there was nothing but a perfect black asphalt under my feet, my legs moving faster than i have ever felt them, wind flying past me.

i ran past the yogurt shop where i once brought a boy i had a crush on for snow-cones, that afternoon where it was so painfully clear he wanted nothing to do with me, but instead with my best friend's girlfriend.

i ran past the place i took my sister when my family got blown apart, the moon was high and half-full that night.

i ran past the place where kyle and nisha took me on 4th of july of 98, a few days before i left home for school, where we watched fireworks explode above the waves and listened to people scream and laugh drunkenly, where i saw a card stuck in the sand but didn't grab it because i didn't want to think about luck.

i ran past the cliff where i got my first kiss, where i kissed a boy so long my lips burned and trembled for two hours after and the feeling of his strong, hard body pressed against my soft body surprised me and made me feel him all over just to feel how his body was different than mine.

i ran until i found the place kerri and i went that one night, a couple years before she died of an overdose, where we went to smoke cigarettes and laugh, talking shit and making plans, the place that was probably the last place i saw her happy.

i climbed down the rocks, my heart pounding, i laid in the sand right by the sea.

i laid there until the tide came in.