Vast Expanse by J. Iner Souster
The night began to drift with an eerie glimmer in the sky. It was a glowing, frightening luminescence. I remember a flicker of a full moon, glowing red, above the horizon, and my eyes were open to a dream. I looked down towards the darkness, and all the light above disappeared. My teeth were biting into the air, and my eyes were searching for the moon’s glory. I fell on the sand, and it was an unbelievable and inexplicable feeling. Then my head was beginning to spin across the shore, and I was trying to climb, just reaching for it, until my face found the water.
Love was the word you searched for—not a metaphor, a look, an action, or an emotion. Love was the air you breathed and the smile you flashed so often. Love was the colour you knew, the beat of your heart, and the life of your breathing. The rise and fall of your chest, beating and sinking, losing and finding. You never thought you would find it, but you knew its absence would leave a hole in you that no one could fill. And in a moment when the sun shone so brightly that you felt its glow spread over you, the only thing you knew for sure was that you would have to go on living.
I knew that one day this love would find me and bring us together again. The wind says there is always time to tell a tale and more than one way to weave it. You’ll recognize the wounded by their smile. They are the ones who keep you going, who keep you sane, and who will keep you secure.
I needed the tears of my love to speak, touching her lips to tell me all the quiet secrets. Maybe if we learn to listen again, we’ll find the words that lead us back home to the heart of our own story and find the meaning in our scars from what was once said but never heard.
I listened to the wind and the waves for the voice that was my lover’s, forever calling me from the bottom of the sea. It’s been an eternity, but you still hear the calls, and they come looking for you. Maybe they haven’t found you yet, and they never will. But they still remember.
One message is a story, another is a declaration, and yet another is forever waiting for discovery. Was it an erratic note or a shattered heart I saw floating in the vast expanse that separates us as I washed back out to sea?
J. Iner Souster is a painter of landscapes and portraiture, a sculptor who creates musical instruments out of reclaimed materials, metal dresses from handspun metal, and a collection of upcycled FauxBots. He’s also a photographer, musician, illustrator and mixed media artist. His writing has appeared in Spillwords, Friday Flash Fiction, A Story in 100 Words, 100 Word Project, The Drabble, and 101 Word Stories.
Instagram – inersouster – www.instagram.com/inersouster
Artwork by Iner Souster
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