Monday morning, quarterly review, a pen in her hand and a very convincing nod. Somewhere around the fourth slide the part of her that matters logged off and drifted somewhere warm with a current.
Her body is present and accounted for. The important part is floating face up over a reef and will not be back before lunch.
The coworker whose vacation auto-reply was written before the trip was booked. The work friend who can say an entire sentence with one look across a conference table. March is long for anyone with a desk and a window, and The Tide Pool is where she keeps her real calendar.
Dawn swimmers and dock sitters agree on one thing: the air after the water is colder than the water. This garment-dyed crewneck from Comfort Colors is ring-spun cotton in rich, lived-in color, with a relaxed fit and dropped shoulders that pull on over damp hair without an argument. Double-needle stitching holds through years of pod birthdays and beach bonfires (and the bachelorette weekend nobody photographs honestly). Preshrunk and made to keep its shape, it is the layer the whole pod borrows and nobody returns. Mermaid Dayz made it for the one who comes out of the water last.