The Art of Illusion

It was unusually dark for a summer’s eve. I couldn’t see the sun or the light blue sky, with its painted streaks of crimson and iron sunset. The clouds were grey invaders into this happy memoir, like ghosts of the past lurking, forever present, but easily ignored. I kicked the pebbles across the stony sediment that ran like a belt, connecting soil and sand. A pebble skirted across the beach, disturbing its smooth perfection, creating dips and miniature trenches in its wake. I listened to the fierce lapping of the sea, like a hungry puppy at the shore; this told me that it was angry if the baby waves were so eager to break.

I sighed, the harsh wind chilling my cheeks and licking at my hair, making the dark strands waft in and out of my vision. Even getting some space away from my lonely home couldn’t help me shift this dark spiral into depression I was feeling. It was like a leech stuck to my heart, slowly draining me of all my positive optimism. There were days like this, which seemed endless now you’d left my life; such dismal lows… I wondered what I was even doing alive…? Was I just wasting my time? After all, not a single one of us gets out alive… Wouldn’t it be wise to just cut the shit and skip right to the end? I felt it deep in my body, I needed you to live. Without you I was merely a disconnected strand invisible to all vacant eyes that stared in my direction. The only time I broke from my thoughts was when I noticed it had grown much darker. The stars winking at me from above. It felt like minutes, but I guess in reality I'd been stood around here, pining for you longer than I expected.

I continued on casting my gaze out on that dark abyss; the sea. It looked beautiful with the reflection of the moon shimmering in its depths, just like there was a second sky. Only this sky… it was so much closer to earth… A sky I could reach out and touch… the imitation of the starlit perfection above. My mind floated back to the night you left, the memories echoed like the howl of a wolf in an empty forest...

The long grasses to the right of me danced in the icy breeze, it made them sway as if they one single organism that breathed and felt. I allowed my hand to dangle forlornly by my side inviting the tips of their blades to graze across my palm; their light feathery like sensation reminded me of your soft caresses and smooth morning kisses… My eyes still focussed out as the charcoal clouds rolled past, obscuring any evidence that the moon was still illuminating the world around me. I had no destination, a hopeless being in search of something that could never be externally personified… I was searching for the lost part of me… the piece that simply vanished when you left my side. I’d been left longing… yearning ever since… My legs ached as I walked the edge of the beach, tired but still restless... In a way I wish I could wander the coastline for the rest of my life, undisturbed by human limitations and merely admire the sea until my dying days… Alas, that was another one of my fatal flaws… I wished my mortality away, living inside a fantasy created solely in my own mind. A fantasy that once featured the most beautiful creature of all time… My gaze faltered as tears welled up frantically in the bottom of my vision, the untouched coastline glittering with their hot sting.

A chill ran down my spine as my soul called out for your own, I needed the glory your presence brought me. A harsh lightning bolt of pain shot through my body as I felt the tears gently wash down my wind scraped cheeks…

I miss you.