The Eastern Shore - A Fable

   There were fires along the eastern shore; fires that burned bright and yellow.  Because of these fires the eastern shore is riddled with plumes of smoke, thick and black, with heavy aromas of dried leaves, broken twigs, and hints of sulfur.  The smoke is so deep it turns the days into night with very few dramatics.  There is no warmth to these fire, only light that never died, never faded, and never escaped.  The fires burn in shallow pits along the shoreline.  These pits are separated by wet sand, each exactly 27 yards apart from the last, each burning with the same intensity.  There is nothing but consistency clouded by black.  The eastern shore is a collection of memories, memories that are lies, lies I am more than happy to believe.  

   The smoke deepens, the clouds hang, the wind never blows.

   I watch these fires with blazing intent.  I watch with fascination and sadness.  There is no fondness in me, there is only emptiness.  The fires burn and I watch them burn.  I get up, walk the 27 paces to the next fire, and sit back down.  I watch the fire of yellow with pockets of blue and white just near its base.  The sand is wet and confused on my backside.  The sea ripples passively.  There are no waves, there is no high tide, no low tide, there is only listless water.  The water holds many secrets; secrets I crave to understand.  But the fire is my life.

   I move along again, 27 more paces to the next fire.  I listen to the silence of my ocean.  I breathe in the acrid smoke.  My skin wrinkles, my hair grays, my bones wither.  But I move on.  The journey is endless.

   In one of the day’s deep nights I stare off into the distance and pick out the fires waiting for me along the coast—waiting for me to watch them.  The fires go on as far as my vision will allow, each one growing fainter and fainter up the winding coastline.

   I touch the fire with the tips of my fingers and feel no burn.  The flames lick me like the devil...and the devil don’t kiss so good.

   The sea wanes.

   I walk 27 more steps.

   I sit down in the wet stand and fire crackles.  A piece of wood shifts and a cluster of sparks kick into the sky.  

   I am old.

   I watch the fire for days, waiting for another cluster of sparks, another shift of wood, but it never comes.  It is only the same monotony and I start to doubt the wood shifted at all.  My mind plays tricks in a world that was a mirror.  My reality becomes a hallucination that somebody else had created and I am their eternal captive. 

   Clouds blanket the horizon, but they do not blanket me.

   I am much older.  

   I move the next 27 steps much slower.  And when I sit, I sit with creaky back.  The sand is still wet, and the fire is still yellow, and the sea is still placid, but I am aged; aged and baffled.

   There is no sleep, there is no relief, there is no catharsis.

   I see foothills to my left, foothills that look like paintings scrawled on a mediocre portrait.  But I never go to the foothills, I never stray from the shoreline.  I do not part from the wet sand and the docile sea.  I am obedient to its wishes, subservient, submissive, pathetic.

   My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt, my eyeballs hurt.  The fires grow hazier, the nights grow darker, the steps seem longer.  Paces go on for days, and the 27 steps do not come easily.  

   Age waits to take me.

   I reach a fire and watch as long as my eyes will allow.  And then the fire goes out.  I stare off into the distance and see the coastline begin to darken, each fire extinguishing one by one.  I look back and see the others have gone out as well and I am cloaked in a sheet of darkness.  The outline of the foothills silhouette in the distance and I consider going to them.  Perhaps I will find asylum there.  And then, for the first time, I hear the sea.  I hear the great waves rush up on shore.  The water slips beneath my feet and pulls the shallow fire pits into the sea.  Suddenly, there becomes no evidence of their truths.  There is only wet sand and an angry sea.

   The tide turns high.

   I drag my old bones from the prospects of the foothills and walk into the sea.  I leave the eastern shore behind.  The waves carry me away and I am consumed by its darkness.

   And then the sea becomes placid again and it waits for its next traveler.