Smooth Sun Set

I followed broken sunlight through the jungle of Costa Rica, camera heavy against my chest, until the trees exhaled a secret beach. The sky was pink, not sunset pink, but the color of dreams remembered too late. Waves moved like silk across glowing sand, and every photograph I captured looked softer, stranger, more alive than the world before my lens. Pelicans drifted through violet clouds. The tide carried silver shells to my feet like offerings from another century.