Illustrated Micro Story

Longing

You will stare and stare again at that ticket on your hand. You will ask yourself how long it has been since you last saw it, where it could have hidden or if, maybe, it was you who hid it. It’s torn you’ll think as you analyse the edges, eaten by time, the yellow of that white that sometime, lifetimes ago, excited you and filled your soul with a fresh, foreign air; as if from another world.

You will touch the rough wooden table of that God forsaken coffee house you are at, lost in a town whose name you don’t remember nor wish to remember. One, two, three knocks, you’ll feel the anxious bubbling begin to ease, that pressure on your chest so familiar and yet so unwelcomed. You’ll look at the handbook, that damned handbook; you’ll ask yourself when you packed it, why you packed it?. You'll smell the salt and water that soaks the fabric that covers that damned handbook. Your mind will stop.

What am I doing here?

You’ll ask yourself without any clear answers. No, no it wasn’t work that brought you to this town, nor a woman, or an adventure. What am I doing here?

Your town. You’ll think of that town, small, with narrow and white streets, of complex history and cultures collided. You will feel the dust in your feet, creeping in through the sandals you are not really wearing, sticking to your skin. Your throat will close shut, your chest will collapse, your hands will look for that rough wooden table that once knew how to calm you. Salt and water you’ll think and your fingers, stained by years of smoking cigars, will search once again for that yellow ticket, almost forgotten in the corner of the table.

Everything is so dry here

Your mind will wonder for an instant, it will float away through the open window of the coffee house. You will see it rise, and keep rising, your mind will escape through the air, sailing through the unknown skies until that dry and lifeless town is no longer recognisable, only stains of land underneath.

But, from a distance something begins to appear. It shall present itself to you as if teasing you, making you want, slowly undressing itself for you, calling you. From up above distance doesn’t seem so insurmountable, from here the ocean is near.