Lost Summer

There was four of us, like the four seasons. Then, one of us walked away, searching for something, we assumed, and just like that, he unravelled from us, slipping through the cracks of the everyday, in a snap of a finger. None of us had actually seen him leave, but we all started searching for him, thinking he had got lost. His sudden absence hit like a string snapping mid note. We sifted through crowds hunting for a familiar outline. Every errand turned into an excuse: wherever we went, no matter how small the task- whether acquiring food for dinner, or going to the spring to fetch water, we always hoped to find him behind the corner, as if he were waiting to be discovered. Our daily activities were tinged with a hope that naturally renewed with each dawn. That hope would enrage us, soften us, deceive us, guide us through each day, the only way we could bear it was turning it into something to do, somewhere to look.

Our children were born. Still, we hadn’t found him. -Why do you keep searching for him? - they asked. Their naïve little eyes searched for an explanation, perhaps their question was destined to remain unanswered, just like his disappearance. We had learned to live beside it, but never within it. We all felt the same. -To me it doesn’t make sense he’s not here. He is a part of this place; without him it all looks so unreal. The same world as yesterday suddenly seems strangely quiet, a meaningless stage missing its actor. It’s like waking up to a grey Sunday morning stretched infinitely, where you don’t have work, everything tells you there’s nothing to see outside, so you just wait, in silence. Each second of stillness reminds me this is not how it’s supposed to be, and I don’t understand why-. Those were my thoughts, although we didn’t speak this aloud to our children nor between each other, as if putting it into words might break something fragile inside of us. Whenever we went anywhere, we would ask them to keep an eye out in the surroundings, to call us if they ever saw a young man with blonde hair, a slightly crooked smile and a mole next to his nose…

Every single corner of that damn island was filled with sketches of his face. Everyone showed solidarity, they supported our obstinacy to find him, even though we never, ever, saw his face again. The island kept its silence, its cliffs held echoes of our voices. Even the sea, which had once seemed generous, now lapped the shore with indifference. We didn’t know every inhabitant, but every inhabitant knew us. Us three, who opened our eyes hoping to meet his, and closed them just to remember his voice. By then, he had become a legend, everyone knew who he was, without having taken part in his search.

One night, when the stars replaced the sun and the night breeze caressed the leaves, our grown sons and daughters came up with different questions -What if he never existed? – whispered one of them. All reunited around the beach bonfire they looked at each other, their eyes met with the thrill of a disturbing possibility. Silence. Their thoughts travelled while the sea waves kept breaking in the darkness.

What if he never existed?

I have heard that question in my own head, creeping in like an unsettling fog; it never stays long, but it always comes back. Time can play tricks on your memory. But then I remember. I remember things that no one could ever invent. The way he laughed sounding like a drunk horse (he’d get mad when we pointed that out), or the way he would lose things and blame us for stealing them. That last summer I remember that the four of us climbed on the roof of a house to watch the sunset. We sat on the warm tiles; they got wet because we had just swum in the sea. He was smiling at me, and his blonde hair almost looked gold, pierced by the last sunbeams. I looked in his eyes and I thought to myself that I didn’t care if the sun was setting, all the heat that I would ever need was right in front of me, trapped in his gaze. Maybe that’s why he reminds me so much of summer…You see, this is what tells me he isn’t just an invention. You cannot bear a grief that stings for decades unless it was real. Loss like this -quiet, sharp, daily- it would have to live in the blood. Is it possible that men carry such things- shapes inside of them, empty from the start?

Time passed, but we were never complete without him; we were autumn, winter and spring taking turns and starting all over without our summer. This cycle kept repeating, and the more we hung out, the more we felt his absence, and the vital need to restore the natural order of things.

Years bleached our hair white, one by one, death wrapped its dark embrace around my other two friends, and I didn’t try to hold on to them. I lost myself through the swing of the last breaths imagining they might slowly bring me closer to him, and I didn’t resist when the lids of my eyes finally closed. People never got rid of those rough posters, product of our own restless hands, bleached by the sun. Outside of that island, nobody knew what was concealed behind those chocolate brown eyes, but within the borders of that land, he wasn’t just another missing person. His features talked a secret language. He was absence, hope, void, he was that longing every soul must bear, perhaps for something we all once lost, or never had. Maybe everyone spends their life looking for a missing season, a presence they never really had, a voice they expect to hear in the silence. And in the end, that yearning took shape, it grew a face. His.