It only takes a moment for a perfect life to end. I realized this too late; I regret learning it sooner, perhaps if I had studied the thought more intently I would not be here right now, staring into the face of death. There are only seconds left, and in these last heartbeats I find myself wanting to leave as much of myself in this place as I can, weaving my words into the landscape as I've been doing for the past fifteen years.
Everyone said that the two of us were crazy when we packed up our things and left the city. We ignored them. Our overloaded boat had skidded out of the port and drifted along for weeks until we finally found this island and decided to stop. It was a noisy place, but it was a crackling of imagination set aflame, of parrots squawking and macaques screeching and flies buzzing over fruits dripping with juices. We settled down then, claiming the island as our own, finding a high cliff which overlooked the sea on which the build our new house. My wife helped me with the building, though it was a long and wearisome task with just the two of us, and it had been almost three years before the task was complete.
I could see it now, glimmering up on the cliffs, our mansion. It was beyond our reach now, I realized sadly, all our labor lost in a single day. Long after we were gone the house would stand as a tribute to our work. That house was the only sort of lasting mark we had left here. Instead of trying to carve out the island to suit our whims, we had let ourselves grow into a part of it: racing the foxes across the hills and through the bright tangled vines; letting the sharp air seep into our lungs and make us stronger, faster; harvesting grapes that tinted the air a rich purple; and in the winter, attacking the cold and frost with a ferocity that seemed to come from outside of us. We never grew cold or tired. It was as if, for a while, the island had lent some of its life to us.
Although we had not tried to change things, there seemed to be a trail constantly following us, as if the place lit up at our presence. Flowers we had stared at seemed to grow brighter, faster. Color and vibrance and joy burst forth from my wife almost visibly, and tinted the whole place with its ineffable fragrance. She assured me that it was much the same with me. I wondered if those changes would stay once we were gone. It would be a shame if they were to disappear with us.
"Someone will find this place someday," my wife said, and I could feel the hope in her voice. I thought of little children running along the beach turned hard and black, voices laughing and cheering, bringing color back into this world again, and smiled. If I could not take joy from this place anymore, it might as well be shared with someone else, even if it was years from now, even if it took so long that the house faded and grew tattered, lonely from want of life.
I could see the lava rushing down the slope from where the mountaintop used to be. Up on its cliff, the house would be safe from most of the flow, merely covered in ash, but the beach where my wife and I stood would be buried in seconds. There was no time to react when the mountaintop blew off. There had been no warning, no trembling of the lush ferns, no rumbling emanating from the ground. We had been watching the sunset on the beach, feet splashing in the cold water, never suspecting. One minute the world was perfect, and the next the volcano sang, and the world was changed to a white-hot trembling bliss.
No comments:
Post a Comment