Cause down the shore everything's all right. You and your baby on a Saturday night.

I've been lighting a candle with my morning coffee, a way to let the static in my head know it has my attention. But there's been nothing, just the quiet hum of a morning spent alone.

They find me eventually though. Here at the Surf Mall, amid the stale stench of suntan lotion and beach-sweated bodies. The ghosts from this lifetime: Old friends. Lovers. My mother impatiently waiting outside.

And Myself. Ages 9, 13, and 16, respectively--different but somehow still the same, like the posters and tapestries hanging from the walls. I see each of them, feel their versions of longing and lonely, already nostalgic for a time that had not yet passed.