The words inscribed on the back of the faded photograph my sister held out to me yesterday led me to a lighthouse sitting patiently on the rocky shore, newly painted with white as it towered over me quietly, allowing the crash of the waves to echo through the ocean breeze—a bittersweet symphony.
The sky was painted with shades of orange and pink, streaked with feathery clouds. The sound of seagulls screeching and the honking of cars from afar reach my ears, tethering me to reality as the melody of the waves starts to lull me into a trance—the scraps of a memory.
I walk towards the lighthouse, each step into the sand a trigger to my mind—and heart. I reach the turquoise metal door and stare at it. I claw at the back of my mind for something—something that could tell me whether or not I should go beyond this piece of metal and search for something I can’t even remember.
I fumble for the key dangling from my necklace, something that I woke up clutching, my mind spinning, void of my identity or anyone else’s. I unlock the door, a smell of familiarity greeting me as I push it open.
Inside the lighthouse, the stairs twirled upward. The echoes of my footfall up the stairs let out a metallic clang, making my heart pound as I near the landing, light pouring in from the window above.
The light that poured into the space, I realize, didn’t come through a window. Instead, a balcony greeted me as I took one last step up on the landing. Looking at the picture once more, it dawned on me that it’s the same balcony printed on the glossy paper, only that the place now looks… somber.
Without even thinking, I start rummaging through the desk that sits on one corner—a honey-colored furniture stacked upon by old paper and folders. The desk doesn’t seem to have any speck of dust that may imply that it hasn’t been touched for a long time.
My heart thumps hard against my chest, my head aching with all the effort to remember what may be waiting for me in this tower. “Here. You’ll find the answers. Your heart led you here before, it won’t fail you now,” Margot, my sister, said to me yesterday as she handed me the photo. Maybe my mind’s too broken to have followed and believed what she had said.
The last rays of the sun entered the room, dwindling down any hopes that I’ll find anything in this place. I sit helplessly on the floor, sighing as I get a glimpse of a white box under the desk. I reach for it, my hands trembling slightly.
I remove the lid of the box, my mind racing as bits and pieces of memory came flooding through me. A white feather lay on top of a stack of notebooks inside the box, a note attached to it that said:
May you always remember that you should not let fear shackle you. Be free with your words for those are your mighty wings. – Dad
I scan the stack of moleskin notebooks that were all full of… stories—my stories.
On one notebook, I find no story. Instead, I start reading through anecdotes. This notebook was about me, not any fictional character. Hundreds of pages alive with the words and emotion I’ve spilled on paper, each story a reminder of the girl I used to be before the accident happened, before I became broken as I am now.
A tear runs down my cheek as I close the box.
The sky has turned dark, and so I stand up from the stone-cold floor. I go down, box in my hands, and lock the metal door.
The salty air blows past me, bearing the bittersweet melancholy of my heart.