Thoughts Whilst It Slips Away 

By Rachael Daly

There are eight billion grains of sand just in this square meter under my feet. 

In youth I’d come down to this beach and stand rigid in the quiet lapping of the sea along the shoreline. Only ever up to my ankles, I’d look down at the hundreds of thousands of grains of sand filtering through my toes and imagine I could feel the Earth’s rotation beneath me, the world spinning at dazzling, unfathomable speeds as if attempting to fling me off into the vastness of space beyond. An ant on a disco ball. It felt like the oozy woozy anemic headspins from standing up too fast, white stars twinkling and coalescing in my vision, reality a blur behind. When I was young, fresh to the world, I wanted to jump and pirouette with the spinning planet, building and building that momentum and then butterfly stroke into the stars. 

Eight billion. 

Now I cling on to this ground below, toes gripping tight. I’ve somehow super-glued myself to the ocean floor, my feet buried in the sand and my brain willing my head not to follow. Soles tacky, the tiny gaps between my toes full, I’m picking gloopy glue off my fingers. Grains cluster under nails. The world spins fast.There are more stars in our observable universe than grains of sand on the whole Earth — or so they say.