2-22-11 <--At least, when it's written in this format. And which has nothing to do with this post.
No fiction-y thing tonight, but description. So maybe it's sort of fiction-y. Okay, it is.
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The light pours from the sky, soaking the people as they walk along the betelnut-juice-stained sidewalks. It's not much different from when it rains, except then the people duck under awnings or behind cement block walls as the wind whips the rain around the houses.
Children laugh--a high-pitched cacophony of squeals and giggles--as they run barefooted across the cement or wobble their ways down the street on wheeled devices, avoiding the dogs, bicycles, taxis and adults. The people lounge in the evening's cool, sitting outside their houses, chatting, gossiping, scolding the children when they slam a beat-up basketball into the walls of the houses.
The sun sinks magnificently into the ocean--the sky painted with reds, pinks, oranges--the light dancing over and through the waves that sound like the wind in leaveless trees--and then, blip! the sun disappears, leaving the island in semi-darkness.
And on nights when the power's gone off, when the air conditioners stop whirring and start rusting from the inside out, when the televisions and interior lights stay off, the stars shine, looking as if they--brilliant gems on a black velvet cloth--could be plucked from the sky and kept in the mind's treasure-store to be brought forth as shiny as when first made.
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And there's more, but I'm trying to keep my posts shorter so Brooke will read them. :D
More later.
(And I am going to try to make time to read them.)
ReplyDeleteIs this a memory from . . . the island--where you on the Marshall Islands?
This is pretty. :-)
ReplyDeleteI love word pictures :) I want to visit!
ReplyDelete@Brooke: I know you're trying to make time, that's why I mentioned it. And YES. Thus the tag on the post that says, "missing Ebeye." But I'm so glad you caught it anyway. I have ten months' worth of sunsets and sunrises over the ocean, not to mention other sights, in my head. :D
ReplyDelete@Janelle and Ali: Thanks!! If given the chance to go back, I would. "Oh, here's a round-trip ticket for you go to Ebeye." "Oh, really? I'm going now." (Slightly exaggerated, but that would be the basic effect. It would be cool to go visit my kids--the class I sponsored is graduating this May.)
I like the picture of the stars. And yes; where is this from? BRAGH WE NEED TO KNOW
ReplyDeleteOh, this is from Ebeye, the island where I was a student missionary in '08-'09.
ReplyDeleteahHa, the tags. Yes. Something to note. Ebeye.
ReplyDeleteYes. It's an island in Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands. You know, I didn't learn that my apartment had an actual address until part way through the year, since all the mail went to the post office addressed to the school.
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