Winner - Senior section
Clarence High School
My face pressed against a damp pillow, wet eyes seeping tears, salt tingling on my lips.
Gloomy light flickers through the swaying folds of frayed curtains, as winter’s bleak sun wakes a cold, dark world.
I dreamt about her last night. It was lonely. Not the dream itself; we sat in the evening’s warmth reclining on that old, chequered picnic rug. The sun, a glowing yolk, staining the sky pink and orange as it slides behind darkening hills. Grass scratching against bare legs, cool against sun-baked skin. We were young then. The lines and creases of time hadn’t marked her face and wisps of her hair shone gold in the sun’s glory. “I’m here, love,” she whispered. And then as the sun sunk from view, the dream faded. It was a beautiful dream. But the remorse I felt when I woke to emptiness was an aching pain in my chest; a fractured heart snatching at shifting memories. Memories; recollections of the past, gone. Dreams; illusions of the mind, not real.
I miss her. A house isn’t a home without her beside me.
Reaching a frail arm across the bed, to her side, my subconscious waiting for the warmth of her touch. But my fingers only brush smooth, cold sheets. My fragile body strains with each twist and turn. Broken by cancer, losing a desperate fight.
This morning’s breakfast; cold burnt toast, strong coffee. It keeps me awake, holding me back from sinking into daydreams. Table set for two, eating for one.
Outside the brisk air swirls, filling my lungs with a refreshing cold.
I wish she was still here. I don’t want to stay if I’m not staying with her. For her.
The ocean crashes, its swelling rhythms echoing up the cliffside. The wind blows in news from the North; like a sombre song of ocean’s secrets, bubbling up to the surface and riding rolling waves to the shore.
Blurring colours as the clothes spin on the washing line like a manic merry-go-round. She was there once too, now only a fleeting shimmer at a first glance, hanging a shirt and singing a sweet song.
The bluff’s edge drops sharply a few metres from the house. Once, a time gone, I nearly lost the house. First to the authorities, then to the land slips they’d warned me of. But I fought, for so long I fought. I used all my power, of strength and will, to keep hold of what is mine, what was ours.
Shuffling steps, shoes grinding softly on a gravel of loose sand and shells. Peering, over the edge, down into seething swell. The wind is fierce today, strong gusts that scoop at the ocean, turning blue to white. But it keeps me from toppling down with spindling tendrils. Sweeping away to the left, the white stripe of the beach, colours blurring; green scrub on white sand across blue water.
A flitting image unveiled in my clouding memory; her back turned away, face to the ocean, the same wind that chills my bones now, whipping at her curls. I can’t see her face, but I know she’s happy, I feel it, radiating from her heart. She laughs; a warming, shimmering sound. Camera in hand, she faces the sky’s demons and attempts to capture their fury. She was never afraid of the winds, or the dizzying drop to the raging ocean below.
Then suddenly it vaporises, replaced by a much, much more agonising memory. An evil that tortures as it’s conjured up from the darkness.
She went missing that day, that horrible, horrible day, when the loneliness first began. Flashes of blue and red, cresting the hill in the distance. A lone police car, but then more followed, 3 more, and an ambulance too, snaking like a string of fairy lights. Something was wrong, so horribly wrong, I could feel it. A weight twisting in my chest with the rising panic. I was fighting so hard to maintain control, to keep from boiling over. The officers asked some questions, faces blank as stone, stripped of emotion. And then, after hours of searching, desperately scouring the bluff and the beach, after calling every contact that came to mind and reducing my voice to a crackly whisper, after screaming her name… we found her body.
I’ve cried every day since. Every day. And now, too, as a tear spills down my cheek. Shifting focus away from the psychedelic foaming patterns whirling deep below my feet to the beach in the distance. Sand bustles into hazy clouds, and the water that crashes against the shore crumbles summer sand banks. The sun finds a gap then, between swaying trees, brightening a sombre mood. And the wind calls, soothing and deep. Her voice, echoing the wind, as though floating on its currents. A little piece of her caught from that day on the bluff; her laugh like honey, glowing smile. Stowed away for the right moment, this moment.
“It’s time now, love.”
The wind shifts, in impatient longing, whistling through the weather-bent trees, past the house and tugging at the folds of my coat. I have no means of energy to resist its pull, staggering along on frail legs, the wind leading me down, away to the left… to the beach.
Grey merges into white, as gravel path gives way to sandy shores. Sand sifts through wiggling toes, masking feet beneath the surface, shoes abandoned. Suddenly, as though my soul has come upon the perfect place for my body to rest, my legs give way, so weak with the sickness, and I crumble to my knees near the water’s edge. No figures blemish the endless, sandy expanse. I can only ever be alone in this world it seems, now with her gone.
I dig calloused hands into shifting sands, that fall away as I lift a careful palm to the sky. Stray grains are caught by the wind, whisked away into oblivion. Cupping palm to fist, the sand streams between the gaps, like sparkling waterfalls of gold in the rays of the sun. An hourglass, counting away the dwindling seconds. Of the day, and of this life.
I stay this way, for some time, the last of my time, I know it. Pondering, recollections of treasured times, not thoughts, just a slide show of colours, displayed in a surreal vibrancy. Memories of childhood innocence, marvelling at the earth’s curiosities, working that terrible office job and falling in and out of love. And then finding the love that stuck; with her. First date, first kiss, moving day, then the big day.
The sky; a canvas of pink smudges that darkens to red streaks and finally fades to a rich purple, like it did in my dreams, and all those years ago too. As the seconds slip away the fire in my heart sputters, the predator closing in. The sun seems sad to see me go, as it hesitates on the horizon. I thank it for all the summer days.
Soon the moon, in all its quiet, silver glory, bobs on a sea of stars. The wind has calmed, howl to whisper. The ocean, jealous of the sky’s glinting jewels, mimics its beauty, crashing waves sparking with glowing lights that pool around my submerged feet.
A last memory, her smile. It glitters in the stars and fills me with warmth that chases away the night’s creeping chills.
I’m coming.
Last grain of sand falls. Flame snuffed out.
I’m floating or sinking, suspended, wrapped in her embrace and draped in the cloak of the twinkling night sky.
