The sun was setting over the ocean. We sat for a while after in an effort to witness our bodies slowly merge with the darkness. It was kind of poetic. How could we turn into nothing this way? How could the elements remind us that we are nothing here?
Our bodies became nothing in ways that were unfamiliar to us. I guess the obvious question is in the end, where do we stand? Where do we stand in this place? Here. On the earth. The girl combed her fingers through her hair and took a deep breath. I thought it was because she was simply in awe of the way the sky’s light had left us – abruptly, poetically but the words that followed were not of admiration.
“Why are we here?” she said. I sat and thought for moment about what she’d meant. Why are we here? What are we here for? I couldn’t figure out why she’d asked this question. What about all of the beauty that had crescendoed and then decrescendoed, made her ask such an existential question.
I think the way we’ve moved indoors and at the rate at which we’d done so sort of skewed our understanding of our purpose as human beings on this planet and if you ask me, we’ve done more harm than good; the earth’s light dwindles, disease and greed plague the air. Whole species falling away from the fabric of existence.
“Did you hear me?” she asserted. Her voice ripped me from my thoughts. I guess I’d been sitting in silence for longer than I’d thought. But, I couldn’t help it. This existential question made it hard to come to a speedy response. “Yeah, I heard you, love.” I said. “… and i’m not sure I know anymore.” I thought for a while when I was younger that I would travel the universe in search of lifeforms but as I got older, that idea faded. I’m also not even sure that would even answer her question.
We exist in this life so unnaturally, with clothes and homes. The world should be our home.
I took my shoes off, then my socks and stood up. I felt tall looking down at the world. I shrugged my shoulders and moved my hands from where they were, to the top of my head and intertwined my fingers together.
“I don’t know why we are here. All I know is that we are here.”
“But doesnt it matter to you?”
“What?”
“Why.”
“Why what?”
“I’m starting to think you’re deaf.”
I was avoiding the question. Not because I didn’t want to answer it, but because as I got older, it really mattered less and less– the notion of purpose. I didn’t know the answer. Reality would break her heart because I know how hard she loves. I know that she has this obsession with it.
My fear was that if I said anything other than love – that what we are here to do is something other than love – that it would break her heart. My fear was that in that moment, she was just searching for affirmation – someone to remind her that all there is in this life is love. All we are here to do is love. But I’m not so sure anymore.
I looked at her.
This bitter earth, well what a fruit it bears. And if my life, is like the dust that hides the glow of a rose. Then what good am I?
“Heaven Only knows.”
“I know, and that’s what frightens me.”
“What?”
“The idea the secrets of life…”
The girl who loved proceeded to remove her shoes
“…the reason for our lives will only be revealed to us in death. Then what good is it? To walk the earth forever in search of something that we will never find?”
The way that the words “never” came from her lips sent chills up my spine. It was over pronounced, like the backs of women over exerting themselves in life.
She removed her shoes, her socks, her trousers, and then her bra and walked toward the ocean.
“This bitter earth.” she whispered.
Not a soul was in sight, only the light that came from the city that lit up the currents of the ocean. It seemed brighter before.
The girl who loved submerged one foot and then the other, then her calves, her knees, her thighs, her waist, her torso, her neck until nothing could be seen of her.
Her body being tossed and abused by the ocean she’d played next to when she was a child, without worry. Without quarrel.
She walked.