By David Mann
I look down at her hand, clasped between my own. How strange, I think to myself. Last we met,
her outstretched fingers barely filled my palm; now they intertwine with mine, long and delicate
and soft.
My eyes meet hers and I’m relieved—they’re still the same beautiful sapphires that first looked
up at me when she was cradled in my arms. I’d been anxious back then. Anxious about all sorts
of things. But those eyes… People warned me those baby-blues would fade, perhaps
metamorphose into something green or grey, or the countless shades in between.
I needn’t have worried. She smiles; they sparkle like the crystal waters of the sunlit shore and
flood my heart with joy.
“Grandpa,” she whispers, and the dam bursts. Childlike, infantile. My sobs echo through the thin
walls. She fusses, searches her pockets for a handkerchief, but I make do with my sleeve. The
salt’s sting is soothed and softened by her smile, and I cling to her still, savouring its sweetness.
I cannot speak, but there is nothing my waves of letters left unsaid. Perhaps they were too much—
overwhelming, even. Yet it was the very chance that they would reach her that forever hauled me
back from the depths of my despairing solitude. And when the time came, finally, that I could
cross the seas that separated us, she could know me. And know why.
The tears moisten my lips, and the taste whisks me back to the spray blowing across the beach,
clinging to our faces under an unblemished sky. She grinned up at me then, beaming with pride
at what we’d built.
I rub the scars, old and new, that encircle my wrists. There’s still time to build again.