"A Farewell to Memory": A Piece of Flash Fiction Exemplifying My Descriptive Skills
Rae Merkle, 2019
We used to take long walks. Waves would dance slowly along the shoreline as he passed, almost
hushed by his innate stubbornness. He never really appreciated the beauty of Positano, he would always say he was a “Rome kinda guy,” and then leave it at that to stare blankly out at the Mediterranean. The little coastal town we grew up in was beautiful, I thought at least, with its sun kissed, aging stone, and abundant greenery, there was little left to be desired. Clear blue waters spread out like a canvas before us, a painted picture, or something you'd only see captured in the aging paper of an old postcard an artist took two and a half years to paint, the vintage kind.
The town itself had its qualities, but the only time you would ever get the chance to become
enchanted by it was at night. Street lamps lit the way for every passerby, nestling themselves in the lines of old shops. Even then the town's countenance could only truly be witnessed by boat. I could see why Hector didn't want to stay, it was a town for admiring, not for living; a painting that you would marvel at in a museum, but not one you would take home and hang up on your wall. The only people who truly adored this place inside and out were the elders, talking of times when they would swear up and down that they saved a nereid's life along the perilous rocks that framed us in, or the marvelous sunsets that made a display of bursting across the sky before diving into the sea, leaving the sky a dance floor for the millions of stars that practiced each night for the amateur sailors along the coast.
Those days are gone now, a forgotten town even more forgotten by time. Walking along the careworn streets, I step
into a bar, the hazy light filling my senses as I sit down, one of the first patrons of the evening. I glance out a window to look out to the now pockmarked shoreline, waiting for night to fall and the nostalgia to settle in. He was walking along the Mediterranean, I told him a story about Poseidon my Nona had once spoke of, but he was more interested in the seashells sticking out of the grey sand, like little homes buried under the ash of Pompeii. Did he hear me then, I wonder, as I watch him dance with an old sailor that had requested a song, some gin, and his hand before twirling about in dizzying circles. That was 40 years ago, and here I sit quietly, listening to the passing cries of seagulls as the sun begins its slow descent into the sea.