The Woman on the Island

A Story by syndi

THE OCEAN AIR was nudged by the current as it swept away all misery. Just like that, burden had vanished- all from the moon and the sun building the tides, the tides building the wind and the wind pervading every square inch of the one-party island. Salt and sand entered through everything the woman breathed from. It was like heaven or nirvana or the afterlife, except she did not feel this way. Although her life and all the things attached were things she felt deeply grateful for, this was solely just life to her. She had no comparisons involving complication or hate or disagreement. All of it moved accordingly across the stratosphere through the unseeable air because the people further away gave it and took it back like an unavoidable disease. Once it crossed paths with the woman on the island ready to pierce through her lungs and only her lungs, the wind quickly destroyed it and she saw no such thing. She only saw palm trees with their roots hidden in the sand, she saw vacancy on every spot in front of the water; every spot was hers. No variety of multi-colored umbrellas were stabbed into the sand so she’d fail to see at a distance from where she was. She could see absolutely everything, and absolutely no one. When she would see birds, there were only birds. Later she would see dolphins, only dolphins. Being alone was what she had known. Knowing people was something she didn’t understand because she never knew anyone. Knowledge of where she came from or who else was out there vanished into the moving air, just like everything else had. It would always be just an ambiguous answer floating with the wind and into the sea, nowhere in search of the big-but-small island the woman had come to grow upon. Nothing could reach her.

She nodded to the sun as it slowly swam upward to the sky. Although all languages used throughout centuries were capable of being imprinted in her brain, diving themselves into her throat out her teeth, there were none she knew. She knew looks and she knew sounds, she knew how to move her hand to anything sentient or non-sentient. The wind made her want to move her hands, the silence made her want to close her eyes, the sound of the continuous ocean swaying in the evening under the stars made her want to cry. She had always known what she felt because it was all in front of her and there was no one in the way, and that was the definite end of it.

She dug her feet into the sand every single day to massage her arch after running back and forth into the moving water. She had taught herself this to gain the strength of picking heavier things up if she needed to. Her feet remain still into the soft, altered dirt. Sandcrabs from underneath travel between her toes and up her legs, she doesn’t flinch once at the feeling.

The woman collapses onto the sand as her feet leave it’s domain, sand falling off her toes like an avalanche back to its original home beneath her. Sandcrabs still remain crawling up and down her body as she lays in the sand, admiring the cloudless sky painted still as she listens to every crab quietly move without any intent. The woman felt them crawl on the hair of her legs, to the hair of her arms as she opened her naked body widely without a thought about it.

Everyday as soon as the sun came down to glisten onto the leaves of the trees, she knew it was time to fulfill every task before dark. She began to scoop ocean water into wooden jugs aligned near her fort, leaves and coconut layers tied into tiny holes to filter out the salt and bacteria. She gathered fruits from her garden and dead fish on the shore into a cluster of banana leaves. She collected bark, twigs, wood and broken pieces of stumps in the forest as she piled it into her handmade fire pit. As the sun was beginning to fall off the face of the earth, all of her everyday things collectively sat next to one another in the pale darkened sand. She knew these things would all be utilized then vanished, that she’ll do the same thing tomorrow, that most things are a cycle of continuity in different versions.

At the end of the daylight, the woman on the island saw this as a piece of life ending; she saw it as a piece of time ending. She saw it as the end of restlessness and the beginning of rest. Although she couldn’t speak any languages, she still thought this way in pictures. The woman walks right up to the water and latches herself to the damp sand, the cold moving salt reaching her then sucking back into oblivion. The light shifts in front of her face as she sees less and less of it. Her heart races beneath her skin as she rests her hand in front of it. She knew with the way it beated inside of her that it wouldn’t do that forever. She knew that everyday when the sun left, she could feel herself growing a day older. Everything would ease once she saw the odd-white shifting sphere in the sky. She knew something that beautiful was meant to be seen by her, it was meant to be seen by whoever was really looking at it. Her mind flashes in pictures over and over again: I am here. I am meant to be here.

As the sun going down made everything look the most colorful, the woman still acknowledged the bitterness of its exit, slowly moving with the sun and her fingers waving at the paint-spilled sky. Darkness spreading across her body, the woman still felt hopeful for the sun’s return. She didn’t truly know why the sun would come back, but it has come back enough for her to know it’ll come back again.

© 2021 syndi

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Coyote Poetry

Amazing story telling.
" She didn’t truly know why the sun would come back, but it has come back enough for her to know it’ll come back again"
The above ending was perfect and logical. I liked the thoughts leading to the proper ending. Thank you for sharing the excellent story.
Coyote