A thumb flicks repetitive across the screen.
Scrolling.
Images of faces, targeted ads and mundane art.

A random couple standing on the beach.
I pause for them.

His toad like appearance distorts my face,
One nostril scrunching up in displeasure at the belly that sticks out rounding into his chest so you can’t tell where his torso starts and ends, while a pair of swim trunks desperately attempt to cling to a skeletal waist.

Her body is normal aside from the concave stomach and the ***** that had clearly been poked at, flayed away, reshaped into an over exaggerated spherical shape.

Two figures clearly trying and failing to force their bodies to reject their aging fate, but they succeed in looking less human, and more like that of distorted dreams. Their skin is too dark, slicked up with oil, and all I can think of is when leather for skin became fashionable.

Their bodies are theirs to do as they please, but this new species of seal takes away the beauty of the water kissing the shore and I find the thought of these distorted figures mar my vision of the beach into a sour taste.

I can only assume its attention they want with the transaction they made: her youth for his money.
So tell me, is it not within my right to judge?
Is it?

I scold myself for being quick to judge with my eyes
though I cannot find myself to be sorry;
For they have clearly invested in their outwardly appearance.
For the sake of themselves or others who is to say?
But they parade through sand exposed, out on display.

Chuckie's distant cousin EC,
a devoted tanner came to the
villa for a long vacation; the
sun beat down on her like a
boulder & she turned dark
brown & then purple; Eli was
compelled to paint her portrait,
as if driven by a demon toward
the sentient darkness; Chuckie
looking the other way through
their affair; Eli's Israeli baby-
mama taking a second guest
house of three. EC laying
on the sunny private balcony;
Eli lathering brown paint in
thick impasto on the open-air
easel painting...thinking not
all brown women are black, the
woman before him was blacker
than that and steadily growing
blacker, beyond deep purple, her
skin should have been erupting
in fiery melanoma but she sat,
old-fashioned reflecting visor
beaming the rays to her underside,
tan lines a mere myth as she
rose and stripped her thin string
bikini...her bright blazing blue eyes
catching his, she smiled, lips red as
the Goddess Kali & poured herself
an ice cold tall mohito from the
pitcher...Eli was mesmerized...the
sun seemed boring compared to the
dark light of the girl, tall & willowy,
lanky like Chuckie; hair burned
blonde long ago, EC was a human
black hole, a living vanishing point.

As the painting melted in the summer
sun, Eli got on his cell & called NYC
to negotiate a lucrative modelling deal
for the clueless Russian trendy.