Maurice

I don’t know how I got here. The temperature is fine. I am not cold, I am not hot. It is very bright. The light is clean and crisp. The air is clear for a long, long distance ahead and up to the sky. The sky is not blue, it is iridescent. There are very colourful houses, all set out in lines, following the sinuous curve of the shore and the sea. The sea is grey, blue, green and the foam is white, so pure white. It crashes against the shore with such force that the spray of water reaches me as I walk.

Maurice is with me. He is never very far from me. He is loyal to the highest level. That is one of the reasons I only have love for Maurice.

Every time the spray of water reaches me I hear the roar of the deep sea trying to say something to me. And how loudly it crashes against the cliffs of the shore. There is no wind, only a salty taste lingering in the air.

I think about life and how it could have been different. The sea is always the sea, but it is always different. The trees are always the trees, they don’t even move from where they were born, and they too are always different. Their branches always grow on different sides of their trunks and their flowers and fruits hang around at different levels.

No matter what, I am different too. We are all different, every one of us. I realise that.

I feel Maurice’s presence near me. No need to talk. It is always that kind of communication that is born from inside and is only understood in silence. I was upset when I left the house. Now, with all this beauty around me, the anger has dissolved and I know that whoever I am, it is the way it should be. “Come on Maurice, let’s go back home.”

I was born blind and Maurice is my guide dog.

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