On The Wind

He glances across his shoulder and views the vastness before him. It is grim and damp, but it is home, it is where he grew up. All his life, he knew no other world. And so, it must be natural for him to want to die here too.

His hands grip the basket handles beneath his feet. It has been too long that he has lived alone. Since the passing of his father, he had taken over the work. Barely months after, his mother died of heartbreak. “Is this what it feels like to be reunited?” her last words whispered.

He had fallen in love only once. The neighbours had moved in when he was a child - how wonderful it was to have a friend to play with. She had curls, just like his mother, with the sweetest of temperaments and the jolliest of laughs. They played boats by the river, they dangled their legs high up above trees and ran across paddocks in chase of the other.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” She had asked, and he had looked away. His life was, and has always been, predictable. A farmer’s son should know no other. She, on the other hand, had the world lying beneath her feet. And that was what he liked about her - the indifferent difference in the way that she saw life.

He began loving her when he started feeling longing in her absence. She would return from trips beyond the farthest reaches he had been, and she would tell him of the adventures she saw. ‘The cigarette smoke that frames the Eiffel Tower in moonlight; the pebbled paths of Edinburgh knobbly under your toes; the lights and sounds of London bathing your senses.

Years moved past and one day, she came home without that sparkle in her eye. She had whispered softly. “There is so much more to life than what is here.” His heart sank for the worst had come. She was not his to keep anymore.

His father once told him that the winds brought him and his wife here. A land that gave them happiness; a life that was comfortable and secure. The wind had made it happen. “Don’t go against it.”

“Come with me. You are a part of me. You cannot stay here.” She cried as he set her suitcase on the floor. The train was slowly chugging its way into the station. The first time they were here, he had kissed her and said he will wait. As it occurred more often, each parting kiss was only sweetened by the hope that it will be met with an exciting tale and another kiss on return.

“The wind is against me. I cannot leave; the soil here runs through my veins.” And as his hands slowly lost her grasp, as she turned to climb up the train steps, as she sat down and watched him steadily move away from her, it then hit him that there will be no more.

And then the war happened, and what should not have been lost, never came back. He had seen enough in life, he wondered, and it was time to move on. Letters had grown stagnant; what memories he had, he kept them in his heart. Crops were tended, milk was filtered into bottles. While the world, and his heart, were in ruins, he moved along in rhythm without pauses.

But that was long ago. Now, he sets the basket by the door. As usual, it will be picked up and money will exchange hands. His hands; they are old and wrinkled, scarred and well-worn like his body. But his mind retains the sharpness of its youth; he could still remember the way she smelled, how bright her laughter was. How comforting it was to have her near.

The next morning, as the sun drenches the pale sky, a knock on the door comes. It is the postman, a white envelope in his hand.

Inside is a short letter. One of the paragraphs reads: I still think of you all these years, but I never had the courage to write. I am old now; I wanted to grow old with you. Is this too late?

He will not reply. He will not know that there is a train ticket and an address. For as he is about to open the envelope, a short blistering gust blows the letter up into the air, up into the amber sky.

The wind will always be against him.