Salted Sea Grass

An exercise for my Persuasive Writing class. Winter makes me talk about the beach.

  Sand scratched my shoulders and the bottoms of my feet, itchy with salt water. I watched ichthyomorphic clouds sit blobularly in the sky. Intorted waves threw a dead fish next to my toes; its tessellated scales were peeling and it already smelled. I walked toward the jetty, stepping around crabs that were cutting anfractuous paths through the shells and the sea grass. There was an old man standing on the rocks; a fishing pole dangled from his hand. His skin hung from his bones like an oversized leather jacket; a scraggy white beard hung down to his belly button; dark hair tufted along his shoulder blades. My brother fishes. He takes a boat into the waves and comes home—sandy and salty and sunburned—with a cooler full of fish. We wrap them in foil and lemon and pepper and grill them until their tessellated scales peel off with the blackened tinfoil.