Cumulative Costs

She glistened bronze in the morning sun
gliding across the sand.  
His pale body was sprawled in early light,  
but he smiled through a drunken fog,  
“Listen, in the distance, a lone gull cries.”  
She looked down on him surprised – perturbed.  
Now, he had her eyes and they were beautiful!  
  
“We always hear the gulls cry on this beach,  
but don’t always have to step around drunks,”  
and her eyes turned quickly away.  
   
He stared after as her form grew smaller in the distance.  
He memorized the lovely shape of her silhouette against the sky.  
He held his hands to his chest, nursing the hurt from her disdainful eyes,  
remembering past injuries and loves lost.  
He silently vowed a mark of revenge on her  
or another of her kind.  
   
That evening a girl ran alone.    
She saw him perched on a rock and smiled.  
There was a ringing in his ears as he asked, "Do you hear the gulls cry?"    
Her eyes were kind. "Yes, I've heard them," she said.    
His body winced when reminded of earlier condemnations.    
The ringing of hurt would not subside.    
He stared at her breasts until she blushed and turned away.    
He followed and she quickened her pace.  
He called again with a loud shriek, "Do you hear the gulls cry?"    
Her pace slowed and she turned. "Yes, I hear them. They are beautiful,"    
and her eyes filled with tears.    
As he approached, her eyes narrowed with pain    
as if she were losing a lover.    
He touched her and all went dark.  
   
When he woke, the sun was high.    
The girl was limp in the sand beside him.    
His eyes questioned the stone in his hand.  
He nudged her but she was silent and still.    
Then he saw red behind her ear.  
He called out, "Who did this?" Silence but for a gull's cry.    
   
The next day a husband told his wife to stop running alone.  
He showed her the news where a young bronze-skinned jogger    
was found dead and probably molested on  
the very beach where she ran.  
“How inconvenient!” she cursed under her breath.  
To her husband, she said,    
“Where am I supposed to run now? I love hearing the gulls cry.”