Shipwrecked Soul

As Clara and I stopped along the rocky beach, we stared out across the murky blue waters to the wrecked sight that seized us, hand in hand as children before the darkness. And in my own mind I took measure of a life, and in hers things I would never truly know that my heart did not tell me, though the tracks beaten in the sand were parallel, I knew. I knew myself to be as a survivor of the past, once a shipwrecked soul.

I thought back to all of the youth I squandered, like sand through fingers clenched. Reckless and ignorant of the deeds I wrought upon those who chanced to care, and dared to love, praying for salvation in needles and puddles of pooling blood and anguish. I saw the shade of my past, grinning idiot, dark eyes, wild hair, electric aura, magnetic personality, charming smile. A collection of shiny daggers, with hooks that drew in, and oh the hearts they pierced, with such effortless grace. How easy it was to play the fire the naive ones ached to touch.

I saw the shade of my childhood. Small and small and shrinking still, nearly invisible beneath the weight of tragedy after tragedy, as careless gods pummeled the foundations of his idyllic world with their angry fists. Each tremor sinking talons of fear deep into the malleable mind, wounds that would callous a loving heart. He sat upon his haunches and then fell to his knees and then his face kissed the earthy ground in a pose of defeat, his breath blooming with rasp as ethereal kicks dented his sides.

I saw the shades of my yesteryear one by one grow to dominate this man's life then fall before the eternal wellspring of indefatigable spirit that lay beneath the flesh and bone, beneath the guts and blood, that churned inside of a fiery soul, never flagging beneath the assaults of an iniquitous life.

I saw the shade of my yesterday. A ghostly scant of a man, with a slight paunch beneath his taut chest. Limbs of ropey muscle beneath soft flesh, a limping gait as a walk, a crooked back as a burden, but the eyes so bright. Eyes that shone with supernatural ease after a life spent fighting. That wouldn't flinch under fire, nor fail to tear in a moment of true desperation. Eyes thankful for the calm after the storm.

Clara gasped as my fingers tightened around hers quickly, but not painfully. I took a deep breath and released a sigh for all times. Watching my shades screech and wail upon the rusted bulks that lay before me. I turned away from the darkness and felt neither its pull nor its call, a new freedom never enjoyed before. The seas of time had swallowed my demons at long last, exorcised by will, defeated by reflection, a view of dusty ghosts that had spent too long a time bothering this man, wandering away into nonexistence.

It was then that I wanted to run, and so I did, and before long laughter shared by both, peals of it, mirthy and true, and dizziness washed over me, I fall upon the sand feeling weightless for the first time in my life, grinning at the skies above, knowing that once and for all that everything is as it should be, the phrase repeating itself in my tired brain as I fell away into slumber.