Between Forgetting and Remembering

A week later, he still had not seen her again. He began to think that she was an apparition. That he had made her up. That she hadn’t really been standing there in the sea. A siren to drown sailors.



He kept to his routines, afraid to look for her, afraid to hope. He visited the newsstand just like he always did. Bought coffee at the cart and talked with the young man there who didn’t want to be a dairy farmer like his father. He sat on the same bench at the canal and read his paper. Every Monday and Thursday, he walked up the mountain. And like he always did, he stopped half way up, in the shade of a small lemon tree, and looked out over the sea.



The first time he’d seen the sea from this height was with the old man. The small, wrinkly man with salt and sand ground into his skin who had insinuated himself into their lives.



Under the lemon tree, alone now, he was forgetting her, years ago, standing at their kitchen window chopping vegetables by hand. He was forgetting the secret smile she wore when he would grumble and complain about the pushy old man with the heavy accent that wouldn’t leave him alone. He had felt like the subject of some unknown campaign where he was always being thrown together with the old man. Two rough stones in tumbler, knocking against each other, and he couldn’t escape.



She had understood then, that they needed each other. The old man was the father he should have had. Pestering him, questioning him, caring about him. He was like the ocean, forever advancing, cutting into the rocks, seeping into the cracks. And before he knew it, the old man had been folded into his heart.



Twice a week they had walked here. The old man slow and hobbling, past the ancient graveyard where he was now buried, past the street vendors at the side of the road, past the abandoned factories and the scattering herds of sheep.



He would listen as the old man rambled out his stories, filling in the holes and drawing himself into the scenes. And then it would be his turn to talk as the old man asked him a thousand questions he didn’t want to think about. Was his mother beautiful? Could he remember her smile? What was the weather like where he grew up? Could you grow tomatoes there? What was his father like? Could he remember his father’s smile? Had he ever seen it?



The road was slow, and he had been reluctant, but he had opened the wounds and he had healed. When the old man died two years ago, a new wound was carved into his heart. A cut as deep as the cold sea, and he closed up around it, hiding it away. He shut out the wind and the cold and the salt, and with them, he shut her out too.



He focused his eyes on the line where sky and sea met and blurred. He tried to identify where the disintegration began, but lost himself in the haze. If it had been clear, black and white…if he had done something, if he could have seen, he could have fixed it, he could have stopped her from leaving. He refocused his eyes on the ambiguous horizon and tried again.



Every time they had made this trek, the old man would stop at this spot. Sometimes he spoke of the town, and sometimes of the sea. Once he spoke of his son that he hadn’t talked to in twenty years. But usually he just looked out over the water, lost in his mind, in another place.



Once, the old man pointed to the black, rocky island that broke the line of the horizon. In his clipped, heavy accent he said, “That island used to be a part of us. And the sea came, slow and creeping, and by the time the island knew, he was swimming in his sorrow. Too worn out to put up a fight. And now he is just alone and doesn’t call to anyone.”







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Please let me know what you think! I know these are short, but (I hope) they are rich, and in the end, it will all come together nicely. xoxo ilke