Inspiration comes in the strangest forms, you know. I don't know why I sometimes see extra-ordinary magic or meaning in an image or a line from the unlikeliest of places, but it does feel right to try and capture it somehow. It sometimes makes for uninteresting, or at worst, pointless reading, even to me, but for now, I will keep trying.

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He was standing in the veranda, the cool breeze gently lifting up the last pieces of him. The sun was awake in all its glory, and the peasants exclaimed about the bounty of the harvest they were sure to receive this year. Ever since the flood, they had started to wonder whether they could pull through, but their God showed that he had not left them yet. It was not until years later that his name would be forgotten, tossed away as yet another false idol, just like they threw pebbles into the ocean in the days they believed he favoured those who did so. Standing in the veranda, however, did not care what they talked about, and made every attempt to avoid conversation with them on the topic that held no meaning to him. Maybe many years ago, when he used to live here as a child who explored the beaches at night, things were different; he could not even remember these now, for there was too much else on his mind.

But regardless of his frustration at the place being too foreign from his memories of it, he was glad that he found himself standing there. "Even if I've delayed this for a long time", he thought, "it was worth it". It was never an easy choice, and some nights before drifting to sleep, he would wonder whether this was a sin, but the morning would erase these thoughts from his head. It is just as how the tide recedes and takes with it all that is strewn on the sand, he would say in his more contemplative moments.

The radio was blaring inconsequently in the background as he pondered what to do next.

"Now the rainy season reminds me of Maria,
The way she danced, the colour of her hair"

He sighed and knew that the road to being cured was sure to take its strain, but it was a risk he knew that he simply had to take. The ethical dilemma was firmly won when he weighed up his longing to forget against the moral instructions he received as a child, so very long ago, now battered by the mores of the times he lived in.

It still felt wrong, though, to be standing there in the brightness of day, where there was no one who was even half interested in what the purpose of his visit was. The day he came, with those two large suitcases, there was only the mildest amount of talk among the peasants, who speculated as to what its contents might be over simple food and smoke. But the next day, all was forgotten, and it was as if he had always been living there. In a sense, of course, he had; but still, he sometimes thought that it was as if his secret was wasted on them. Thinking about this again, he simply laughed, and enjoyed the bake of the sun.

"I left a little something to help the time go by"