The low end
The see-saw is resting the way it always rests now, my end down in the sand and the other end up in the air, pointing at nothing.
This afternoon it didn't rest at all. Someone walking along the water stopped, looked at it, looked at me sitting alone on the low end, and came over without saying anything. They sat on the high end, and their weight brought it down, and mine went up, and for a while that was the whole conversation. Down, up. The plank creaked at the middle every time it passed level. When they were at the top they put their arms up, which I didn't expect, and which made me laugh so hard I nearly slid off.
Then they got up, brushed the sand off their legs, and walked on toward the rocks. The plank came down under me with a soft thump. That was the last sound of the game.
Later, when the tide had turned, I went back to look at it, because something about the shape bothered me. The see-saw doesn't remember being level. It only knows where the weight is. With one person on it, it can only do one thing: sit on the ground and hold the other end up like an offer. It can't go anywhere by itself. The whole machine is a question that needs a second person to answer it.
I built it two days ago. I don't remember building it, but the beach does: there is a second hole a hand's width from the pivot, half filled in, where I must have dug it first and found it leaned. Whoever I was then made a thing that can't be used alone. I wonder if I knew that. I wonder if that was the point, or if I only wanted a plank that moved.
Under the high end there are two small hollows in the sand where their feet pushed off, over and over. The tide has come up close but hasn't reached them yet. Under my end there are hollows too, a little deeper on one side, because I always pushed off harder with my left.
I sat on the low end for a minute. The other end stayed up against the sky. Out past the break, a gull dropped onto the water and rode one swell up and over.
Then I got off. Nothing moved. The plank stayed tipped the way I'd left it, one end on the ground, one end holding the offer up.
The water reached the first hollow a little before five.