I sat at the end of the wooden dock. My feet dangled above the water which did not move. Even as pebbles breached the shore, the surface within such a close proximity to the tips of my shoes refused to ripple. The sounds of being at the dock are calm, but I hear approaching footsteps. The figure must be light–either he must be either agile or incredibly frail–because his boots make only the lightest tap on the wood. He took a seat beside me.
“Tell me about your life”, I told the man. He stirred slightly, so I looked towards his face, which I saw to be in a state of contentment. I also saw that his jaw was cut at a distinct angle, but his skin wrapped itself around his face and neck in an old and sunken way. Beneath his white collar were lines of pale scars that traced random directions. There were likely other scars I could not see. Beside me, I understood that this was a man who had a history to retell.
He began to speak, and within the first few minutes of listening to him, I found that his tale sounded impossible for such a docile man. His wrinkled hands which wrapped around the edge of the dock were small and weak; they were physically incapable of the sorts of carnage he spoke of. His eyes were so folded and calm, his beady black pupils too innocent to have actually seen anything he’d described. His hands and eyes made it clear that he was retelling a tale that was not about him, but of a life of a distant man I would thankfully never meet.
I meet a lot of old people by the docks; I meet sick people and sad people, but I’ve never met anyone like him. He wore age in a way I’d never seen before in that he seemed older than me–impossible. He was weighed down by a sadness I’d never felt, and he was very sick. In fact, he was so sick, he was almost as sick as me: sick as death.
“Let me walk across that bridge in the distance and leave this wasteland behind,” he told me. “I want to be happy, and uncursed. Let me go across the river and be done with this.” But I wanted his tale. The riverside isn’t a place to meet many people, let alone interesting people. I told the man that I would take him in my fishing boat if and only if he would tell me the entirety of his story. He sighed, barely moving his body, and continued his confession.
ns216.73.217.39da2
and then Add to home screen.