The Gift

What do you want then? She asked him at the cold quiet beach. Well, he replied- stubbing out the cigarette in the sand- maybe, he said pensively, maybe a quiet and modest life? A life out there somewhere that allows me to do what I love? and if possible, occasionally, do whom I love? he chuckled like the 16-year-old boy that he was.

Is that all then? she asked him. A little piece of the sun in my windows, that’s all! he shrugged. They fell silent. The sun had already half-dipped into the blustery ocean. His boyish ideas about his own life were no longer mere ideas. No longer jumbled. He felt they were no longer exclusively his own anymore. He saw them in her eyes now.

He’d gifted them to her. Her lips taste of cherries, he suddenly remembered; and her warm hair smells of freshly ironed clothes. This wind is getting pretty cold, she broke the silence. Yes, let us go, he replied. As they brushed off the sand, a whale cried somewhere deep in the ocean. Perhaps the whale said something worthwhile, but not a single human heard that cry.