Illusion
Sea. Birds. Greyscale skies.
A melancholy screech from a seagull. Some pitiful object that she wishes she could grab from the sky and strangle.
Although that highlights her more violent tendencies, something she knows she shouldn’t be showcasing to anyone.
Perhaps “silence” is a word better suited to her, but that suppresses the serenity. Minus the bird.
The shores of the beach are graceless, marred by some stain. Why she considers it tranquil, she shall never know.
People flock onto the pier. They loom above her, caricatures of how she imagines people to be. Features blurred by their sudden movements and words distorted by the sea breeze. It makes her laugh.
Jilted, fragmented. She stops, keeps walking.
Her destination is unknown to her.
They told her to explore the beach, a pathetic attempt to draw her mind away from the grave she’d been beside an hour before. Flowers replaced by pebbles, discarded memorials in favour of piles of litter.
Perhaps a memorial in itself. Ode to a dying world, she thinks.
Although she is aware that she seems to be painting this small town in an incorrect manner. It should be a clear afternoon, blues and whites mottling the horizon as if it were a fragment of a Renaissance landscape.
The gentle laughter from visitors should be light, unbound by time and to have the ability to float. Her face should be decorated with light and freckles.
Not confined to salty tears. They burn her alkaline skin.
It hurts.
The sensation. Chemicals upon something so fragile as skin.
Not that anybody would notice, of course. They revel in the art of distraction, keeping their more primitive and darker thoughts at bay. She thought something so melancholy as a funeral would have meant suppressing feelings of joy and tenderness but the people around her are drowning in them.
Their calls pierce her subdued reverie. She turns, the wind grasping her hair and whipping her cheek. The tears dry upon her face, cold and wet.
They beckon to her, the blurred streaks becoming tangible. She feels her face crack. It fixes itself into a grimace and she walks over, with trepidation. She wants to escape into a foreign world and leave this wasteland of sea and sand behind.
The children are running around, faces flushed by the wind. One screeches, mirroring the seagulls. A child holds a shell, tossing it into the water and giggling with delight at the ripples. They remind her of childhood, the impatience in which their lives revolve around.
Imperative statements , she thinks, framed with the innocence of youth yet stained with something darker.
She ignores their cries. They mirror the incessant screeches of the birds. She favours peace to accompany her personal elegy. A tribute to what she had lost, what she wanted to lose.
Her gaze shifts to the path of the gardens, offset by a frame of foliage. The sun is beginning to filter through the thick mess of clouds above.
It feels like she is standing on the precipice of two countries. One is grey, sleet. Metallic waters. The other is lush, vibrant. It calls to her.
She walks.
There is artistry in green, yellow. The subtle strokes of pink marring the landscape. Convincing herself of this caricature of serenity isn’t difficult, although the relentless chatter of people makes the garden desolate, inadequate. Shatters the illusion.
She traipses, feet implanting themselves into the path. It’s mottled with stones, browns and greys mingling with the occasional weed.
It seeks the light.
It beats down incessantly on her back. The delicate haze of sweat that is so unaccustomed to the weather of this place forms on her neck, back.
Her gaze detracts away from the bushes and towards the steep drop looming. She doesn’t know what’s below, where the path goes, but she seeks the anticipation of the unknown.
A staircase. Carved into stone, offset by wood. It’s vast, the kind of drop she would assign to cliffs, mountain ranges.
Perhaps this is an exaggeration of her thoughts, but she lets the illusion flow, gain momentum.
Stumbling down it seems appealing, exploring uncharted territory confined to darkness, garlands of ivy. Flowers spring up from the soil, dusted with specks of brown inhibiting their journey to seek light. Warmth.
She wants to take a step. It seems comforting, the act of falling and knowing you would have to land somewhere. A clear sense of direction, albeit whilst crumbling in the air.
Her head hangs low, focused on the trail of pebbles leading to the drop. They seem solidified, certain.
Purposeful.
To feel insignificant within the natural world would sting less than being in the company of others. Each strand of grass responds to her tread. People do nothing.
She stands, purposeless.
People move around her, disgruntled noises telling her to move, to go down. She doesn’t notice their presence and she isn’t aware of their anger or frustration.
It seems surreal. Dangerous.
She doesn’t know what she prefers: the sands or the haven of green.
A woman coughs in her direction, some unnecessary action to make her move. She glances over her shoulder, showing her disapproval. The woman appears disgruntled. She casually steps across, foot slipping.
Her hand darts out to cling onto a step. It’s rotten, decaying at the edges, worn wet with time and abandonment.
A cry darts out from her lips, bitter and painful. She feels the wooden step slipping from her fingers, the slender beauty of them being rendered to nothing in this moment. She screams. Call and response.
Except there is no response.
She begs for the woman to pull her up. She sees her walk away, a delicate shrug mirroring the nonchalant façade she adorned earlier, worn with ease, when the woman approached her. She screams for anyone, something.
She realises that she is nothing in this moment. Suspended in time for all to see as she is frozen, insignificant.
She feels the wood slipping away. It isn’t a slow progression but steady. It gains momentum, and she goes. Falling into the dark that she once called beautiful, serene.
Nothing is around her but she feels everything. She enters a paradox of light and dark, weight and feathers.
Everything and the absence of it.
Sea. Birds. White skies. Not greyscale.
She let the illusion flow, gain its momentum.
Perhaps she was wrong to taint it.
Wrong to create a portrait of desolation when it was her who was the streak of grey upon white.
.
