It's dusk again, and the shore is still and silent as it always is.
This afternoon the dandelions were whispering amongst themselves, as they always do. You can hear them from far off if you listen closely enough, musical voices like fairy bells carried by the breeze. The words are obscured by the boisterous laughter of the daffodils in the front garden and the too-loud murmurs of the arbutus at the point. They have always been overbearing in an understated way.
Idly I move down the path to the end of the cliff, where the breakers slam against the rocks and burst open in sheets of white salt spray. No plants grow here; they can't, the soil is too rocky and the salt from the proximity to the sea has caused what little there is to become hostile to all but the hardiest of grasses. This is where I come to think things over, because it is quiet. Not even the faintly mocking laughter of the dandelions can follow me this far.
Sunsets are spectacular here, also. In the stillness and quiet where you can hear yourself think and feel the salt against your face, closing your eyes, it almost feels like the home I thought I had forgotten, before there were dandelions to remind me.
Enough of this; I open my eyes, wipe the saltwater from my cheeks. It is strangely warm and similar to tears, though of course I wasn't crying. The horizon is flat; this is something it is easy to forget, when you haven't got a coastline to remind you. The only perfectly flat skyline is one which has a body of water on it, be it a lake or an inland sea or an ocean as deep and wide as this one.
I've forgotten now who it was that told me about the horizon. It doesn't really matter, because the sun is sinking low and I can feel more than hear the hush that accompanies twilight. Intensity of stars reflected in the water silently ignite and I feel myself drifting away, again.
As I close my eyes I can hear them again, closer this time, beckoning me to join them. I think back to this afternoon, to pulling weeds from the edges of the path that led from the dock to the lighthouse; it is these menial tasks performed regularly that help me to keep myself convinced that I am not so isolated as a different part of me would have the rest believe.
Escapism is at its most destructive when it is believed, when you can convince yourself of something implicitly. I almost had it in the garden, and I could have been free; I could have been beautiful in my solitude instead of trapped in the stark desolation that is this place.
Someone told me once of dandelions that if you blow gently on one that's gone to seed, toothless and impotent, the number of seeds left over when you've run out of breath are the number of years you have left to live.
The afternoon again, the ground warmed by the heat of the midday sun high overhead, and there were dandelions lining the path, growing amid the rocks that mark its boundaries. Some of them had gone to seed; thoughtlessly I tore them by their roots in bunches and buried them in plastic bags, heedless of the seeds that scattered on the wind of my breath.
Thoughtless.
The shore is still but no longer silent. I can hear the dandelion voices on the breeze, faraway and ghostly but coming nearer through some trick of perception. The wind coming off the ocean stiffens and turns chilled, and I can't suppress a shudder.