It was small with beige tile, beige walls, and orange plastic-backed chairs—a cold reef in murky waters. Every surface was hard, wipeable, and designed with the expectation of stains that would need to be banished. The reception desk was a shell of clear plexiglass (this was long before the pandemic made it commonplace). To the right, a bulletin board sported 8 x 10 posters of the missing or wanted. One encouraged passersby to identify a John Doe.
They took his photo post-mortem. Although his face was smooth and unblemished, death had stamped its telltale mark. There’s always something around the jaw, a mixture of sharpening and loosening. The living hold tension around their mouths, perhaps built on all the things they will say, or will choose not to. The dead no longer need to hold this pose.
He was young, my age with ginger hair and stubble. As a teen, he probably sported a tsunami of freckles across his nose. The type of boy who could have made me blush, could have coaxed me to join him in the backrooms, darkened corners, or into the waves for a swim. I wondered at him being there, and perhaps I wonder still. Who was this unclaimed son, brother, or lover? What river had led him from all that he knew, all that knew him? How does a man reduce down to a glossy macabre portrait? Run ashore in this temple at the fringes of society.
His mystery in life and death sent me drifting, wondering if his people had left their homes three centuries ago. Sailed across the sea on coffin ships to a land that may not have wanted them but absorbed them all the same, covering memories of each shade of green in snow, chipping away their Gaelic tongues. Faded their Celtic knowledge of all the old pathways to heaven.
On grey days that hold too much time and quiet, I wish to him a ship. I watch him. He is barefoot in a tunic of broadcloth. He’s mastering the ropes and sails, an Atlantic sun glowing orange in his hair. Fortunately, my ocean took me well beyond that office, and onto the calm waters of home, family, and clarity. I stand on the shore and bid him peace. I bid him to find his name somewhere far beyond the concrete walls that bind us, to find rest in golden fields of gorse.
Perhaps we will meet one day on peaceful waters, raise a mug to fair winds and following seas.
Issue 14
NEON WASH
Tara Knight is a writer who lives in Northern Ontario, Canada. Tara’s work has been published in Literary Hatchet Magazine, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, Star*Line, and Synkroniciti. Her creative non-fiction won 2nd place in the Toasted Cheese Midsummer Writing Contest 2023.