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Summer Time

part 1

By Mario & Melissa Saliba

June 26^th, 2023

…It is a typical sweltering July afternoon.

His younger sister and his friend are sitting on a flinty grey rock breaking through the cobalt blue sheet of water towards the middle right of the expanse of sea, and with patches of green slime and fossilised shell engravings glinting in the penetrating rays of white-yellowish sun rays.

Another three of their friends have joined a seaside game, part of which involves jumping into the sun-heated afternoon waters from a small-scale breakwater located to the right of the beach, and with each plunge sprinkling pearly atoms of ocean and white spray into the stagnant mid-summer air.

It is a medley of vari-coloured sunhats and caps and large beach umbrellas to fend off the ultra-violet rays;

also bathing suits, towels, floaties and sarongs in all the colours of the rainbow with imprints of blue dolphins, white waves, butterflies, blooming flowers in high summer, and autos;

and with flashes of the sun sporadically adding a splash of yellow-grey, reddish sepia to this spectacle of light, navy blue sea and hues.

Summer Time

This is set against a backdrop of a pebbly beach to the front made up of a vibrant fusion of mostly brown marble, a sombre dull red, dusky grey-blue and beige, off white stones, and a jagged rocky coastline to the left displaying some notable hard rock stone boulders and stacks, and further in chalky yellowish-white limestone structures.

This is all amidst the bawling of a young child in a bright yellow duck floatie, a beach and sea spotted with little families, cliques, deck-chairs, gelatos and a babel of sounds, sandcastles made of small precious stones and gravel, and then splashing, a flying many-coloured beach ball, and countless bubbles…

And soon four of his group of friends, including himself, also create some mayhem as they decide to race to the deeper end of the beach. There’s froth in the race, an older woman swears at him as he unintentionally bumps headlong into her, and the saline water scalds his eyes and mouth.

Summer Time

He knows he will not win, so he stops swimming, and instead loses himself in the display of where the sky brushes its lips with the waters below, leaving an arresting trail of a distant azure grey giving way to a dimmer and lighter cyan blue, and with a hint of translucent threads, as sky and sea are held in the sun’s lingering embrace.

Soon, however, he finds himself under water, and involved in a water fight, with wavelets of fizzy seawater fluttering through the air and amongst giggles, and loads more splashing.

Then finally, after swallowing a few mouthfuls of salty water, and leaving a trail of agitated spumy water behind them, they collapse exhausted on a bed of pebbles, basking in the sun’s golden hour…

Footnotes

Written by Melissa Saliba

FootNotes

Written by Melissa Saliba

© 2026 Mario & Melissa Saliba

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