Come Home

I waited on the dock for many days.

It was hard to tell that the hours were passing because the sky's clouds were a monotone, staid gray, covering the sky enough to make one forget that it had once been blue…

The water was too low for my swinging feet to touch it and I swung them like a metronome, tick and tick and tick and tick, because they were the markers of the hours. And the hours passed by like snails and rabbits, because sometimes, when I was hopeful, I believed that I could be there for hours. But then other times, when I all I could see was the white, bleak mist over the blackened waters, the hours were horrible tortures.

I woke up early and went to bed late, for him.

To pass the time, I would try to conjure up his face from my memory, which was as scattered as wind blown papers. It was a painful game and I don't know why I continued to do it… you see, I couldn't really remember him. Sometimes I would say to myself, "Surely, his eyes are blue." And then doubt would fill my like a venom and I would say, "No, they couldn't be anything other then brown." Then I would look up into the mist for some sort of answer but it would laugh at me and confuse me entirely. The mist was my enemy. I wouldn't cry, you know, he would've said to be strong. I wouldn't let the wet air clog my brain.

He is coming, I would think. He is coming and he loves me.

The mist would laugh. How can you be so sure? It would say. It has been a decade. How do you know that he hasn't forgotten you? There are many other women in the world. You are not so beautiful.

Then I would be afraid.

At times like those, I would escape from the mist and I would run up the stairs to my seaside house and I would sit lonely and wet from my shimmering eyes. Of course that couldn't be true, I would say to myself. The mist has lied.

I miss you, love.

He'd said, before leaving, that he would always be with me. I made him promise to stay alive, for me, because wars are terrible places. He'd promised. He couldn't break his promise. He would come back…

Years passed on the dock. I was thin and pale with worry. The mist made me weary. My legs were sore. I didn't eat enough.

You are not so beautiful, whispered the mist, surrounding me with its dead aroma. It would try to lull me to sleep but I would be strong, for him. Someday he would come back on his boat. Soon, I would say to myself.

Come home.

But the years rolled by and were carried with the tide.