To Eliza had she thrown herself into the sea

A Story by Maffi Deparis

“Nothing so reminds you like the sea that the enemy of life is not death but loneliness.” ― Wayne Johnston

To Eliza had she thrown herself into the sea.

They called the trees on the rocks the sirens of the reach, their spindly branches stretched towards the sky like Brown limbs devoid of leaves.

In the distance beyond their clinging, rooted figures was the island of Loreburn.

There a single house stood, half hidden by shadows

If we drove for a day across the land where lakes separated masses of peat, we would reach the sea and the rocks. And we did. Drive that is. To where the mutinous looking gulls swooped from grey skies like white kamikaze planes, their dark little eyes glittering.

Newfoundland.

I see it in my dreams.

I am Sheilagh there, with my many trunks, waiting on the empty beach. Half searching half hiding from the eyes of the small house. Part of my dress will already be soggy and perhaps I will be shivering slightly as I clutch a spyglass to my breast, my hair a burnt umber.

Who would help me drag my heavy trunks up to the small house? Up the slight incline of sand to where prickly grass grows desperately on unstable ground? Up to where the stone well echoes? Who shall bear the weight of my many trinkets and lace across the heavy sand and down again for the third? The fourth? A dog yips somewhere, hidden by the mist that creeps up from the water.

Wayne Johnston wrote about horses on the cobbled streets of saint johns, but is my character so desperate for isolation that no sound follows her feet when She walks?

I myself must walk up the old beach where the wet sand consumes all different kinds of vibrations and muffles them. Carrying my own baggage, leaving nothing but deep impressions in the landscape that even after all that shall be erased by more water.

The house is cold. They had warned me as much. Gossamer cobwebs have started to twine themselves around the eaves, there is a spot of green paint thinning on the window frames, inside the dark glass a slow fire is already lit.

Eliza.

"Today, today, we shall see about fish, and sheeps milk and stew...we shall see about bread be speckled with flax and cheese imbedded with currants."

To face the sea, to redden my cheeks with the gale, to brace oneself for the maddening lonesome ness....here we are here we are.

Soon, night creeps inside the old threshold like a friend whose many vices are sin of the varying kind. I wait for it by the doorway, a cup of tea in my hand. I see the nine o clock sun setting slowly, and the gulls retreat to their rocky precipices. So many loud noises ceasing, accommodating the sick rattling of buoys and the snowing of cattail pods.

If Eliza were to drown, I dare not try to imagine, I would suffer without a phone in this house. Her figure is a shadowy blue on a boat half the size of a baby whale and just as dark. She is a silhouette of my survival leaving, and I close my eyes, turn around and face the warmth of the slowly burning fire....

Here we are then. You and I. Me and myself to face the demons of the night.