Esther Sadoff
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Serendipity digs her feet in the sand

She watches sand sift into each footprint like mini avalanches.

She wonders where the crabs go in winter.

Do they hide under all that sand? She tightens her hat on her head.

The water is marbled with prisms of drifting light.

She watches bodies crouch to flatten their towels.

Serendipity wonders if it's wrong to not want anything,

wonders what she should want, wonders how a hat stays on a head.

How a hat is someone's volition. Someone’s desire to desire.

The bathing suit plunging at her neck is regret.

She feels exposed like ice melting into a puddle.

Like a pile of sand that used to be a castle.

It is crashing into the sea.

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Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Little Patuxent Review, Jet Fuel Review, Cathexis Poetry Northwest, Pidgeonholes, Santa Clara Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, among others. Her two chapbooks, Some Wild Woman and Serendipity in France, are forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

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