DO NOT FLUSH

The metal sign was screwed into the chipped plaster wall above the toilet, and my eyes traveled down the list as I did my business. Better than looking at the alternative.

Tampons, sanitary pads, napkins, the usual, except someone had used a blade to etch their own suggestion at the bottom of the list.

HOPES AND DREAMS.

I squinted and looked at the scrawl again. Surely, this was intended to be a sketch of what I was trying not to look at right now, or maybe a lewd comment about it.

Nope.

HOPES AND DREAMS.

Huh.

I stood there a minute longer than I needed to. All the bathroom stall doors had been locked this morning when I was leaving the beach, and I could’ve probably made it home. But I’d driven around the low-slung building anyway and waited for a stall to open up, and now here I was, in this concrete and tile ashram, where I nodded a thank you, dropped the seat back down, and walked out without flushing, like the sign said, just in case I had a few hopes and dreams I didn’t know about still circling the porcelain.