Eternity in a Grain of Sand

This is a final draft of something I posted on YWS a long time ago.

The fog horn blared for the third time as somebody told us all to hurry up. It was twilight, at the end one of the most beautiful days of the season. We could hear the sound of bottles clanking together in people’s backpacks, the reverberation of the guitar strings as one of us slung her case over her shoulder and joined in the rush towards the ferry that would take us to our moment of transitory liberty, however brief it may be.

Another time ago, when we were lost to the freedom of childhood, we always thought of what was coming, like the distant view of the island on the horizon. We were forever conscientious of the fact that the future was a coming thing, but it was reserved in a deep corner of our minds, a place that we arrive at only when the thought of loss and change becomes more horrifying than the continuity of the present. As the island steered closer and closer towards us, somehow our proximity to reality seemed so far away. Not a part of the earth, but a place where the words of culpability had not yet imprinted their tracks upon the sand. This pure and untouched part of the world could in fact become as distorted as the one we were leaving behind. At last, the ferry reached the dock, and we were left alone in the abyss of our minds for the first time.

As we were walking, all we could think about were the rocks that were sinking into the soft sand of the island. It was amazing to wonder how the basis of an island, the stronghold of a friendship, could waste away and be carried off forever, lost within the minds of those who chose to remember. And, because that rock had laid placidly in the water for so long, as the water ran over it, it eroded away grain by grain, like unforgettable memories lost as casualties in the war of time.

The silence filled our ears with such great force that it was hard to look at anyone without being caught in their unwanted gaze forever. This is what it had come to. Our four years together were being ended on an island in the middle of a lake, isolated from civilization but in proximity of our fear. We had never been so apart from the world, or ourselves. Somewhere along the lines of our adolescence, we had broken those bonds created so long ago, only to forge new ones that we knew, subconsciously, would never last through the strains of time. And so, we were there for one last instant, one last try, some of us wanting to get closure on the past and move towards the future, others trying to light the flames that had seemingly been extinguished so long ago.

The fire cracked and sparked all around us, the flames licking the sky. Soon, the rocks became heated and glowed under the shadows of the moon. One giant splintering scream and an enormous piece of hickory burst in the middle of the pit, releasing a beautiful, warming smell that filled our senses with the familiar aroma of home. We were all off somewhere, trying not to be there because, frankly, it was too damn hard. Some gazes were fixed upon the petrified logs that encircled the fire pit or the green moss that spurted from their ends, others on the circular wall of the lofty fir trees blanketed by the shadowy night. All that remained of our faces as we encircled the pit was the shadow that revealed only a dim aura of light; was this reality, or was it truth? What we didn’t know was that the answer resided within our ability to feel.

One of us grabbed the guitar and gently started to pluck its strings, and in a faint, but confident voice, began to chant the familiar song. One finger after the other, weaving the notes in and out of the strings, entrancing us with the melodic movement of the sound. The fire created a hue around her, making her out to be something greater than she was, but for that moment, she was great. It was another turning point, a fork stuck in the road. All our moments together, all our spent tears that had stained the others’ shoulder, all those dreams we held so close were all being brought back to life by the music. We had become the song; the song that, no matter where we ended up after we left this place, what we decided to do, we would always hum and bring ourselves back to the fire pit.

“When was the last time, really, that we were all together?”

Her voice echoed and reverberated in our ears, but we were so absorbed by the dance of the fire and the entrancement of the music that we only stared into the pit. Fire, the destroyer of life, was somehow bringing us all together for a probable last time, and we knew it, but we didn’t care. All that mattered was us; weather, individual circumstance, time itself became secondary. It didn’t matter, and did it, we once thought to ourselves, in the end? We all knew that we were heading down that inevitable structured road, but for one mere moment, we had us. And, we knew, that it would all go down beautifully from here.

For an instant, for a brief collision of joy, we were pure. Nothing can and ever will be able to take that away from us. We were more than just friends; we were souls all strapped together under the coronet of stars, unified out of the shackles of our own oppression to become one with each other and just be. Forgotten were the predisposed notions of popularity and caste; we were just human beings with a bond that was deeper than the roots of the trees that surrounded us, closer to the heavens than the flames of the fire that tried to grab hold of the stars, stronger and older than the rocks that kept the island from eroding grain by grain into the sea. We became the truth. As the fire and the music subsided, tears began to rain down from the heavens. Only our eyes shone as brightly as the moon. As we elevated our necks towards the sky, the rain splashed our faces, cleansing us of our ill-gotten righteousness and our sanctimonious ideals. We were pure.