The Lantern
Not every day goes the way you want it to...
There are days when the world does not break; it simply leans on you. She felt like that was the worse option.
A broken thing could be named, swept up, mourned. A leaning world demanded that she keep smiling while the horizon slid sideways. So by evening she was tired in a place no one could see.
She walked to the harbour because night water never judged the weight you carried. Hopefully the sea air would tip the scales back in her direction. Along the narrow streets, windows glowed honey-gold; laughter rang from a café doorway. For one sharp breath she felt how unfair beauty could be… how it kept happening even when you were cracked like porcelain under paint.
At the far end of the pier, a single lantern pulsed against the dark. Small, brass, familiar. Beside it, a folded note pinned under a smooth gold coin (the kind he always worried between his fingers when he was thinking of her).
She knew his handwriting before the flame reached her boots.
No questions tonight.
She exhaled, felt her shoulders drop a fraction.
No fixing, either. The storm looked like yours to keep for a while.
But no one should have to find their way back without a light.
A shy smile tugged at her mouth… half laugh, half sigh. She sat, tucking her coat around her knees, and let the lantern warm her cheeks. The harbour wind slipped in under the collar, but the note in her hand was warm from his pockets,
and it smelled faintly of maple and the tea he always drank too late in the day.
If the silence feels safer than words, the last line read, keep it. I’ll sit beside it until it softens.When you’re ready, follow the lamp-glow home. I left the door open, the kettle on, and the bed turned down on your side.
She pressed the paper to her lips, tasting the ghost of him. Between the stitched letters he’d drawn a tiny, crooked rose, not perfect, but unmistakably his.
The sea murmured as waves yawned against the stones. She watched the lantern’s flame bend and rise, bend and rise, an intimate little dance. Something inside her unknotted. She looked across the water to the west, and felt the promise of arms she could fall into when the night’s edges had finished scraping at her mood.
She closed her eyes and pictured him waiting… feet bare on the kitchen tiles, mug steaming, shirt rumpled from pacing and looking up while he thought about how beautiful the moon was.
When she finally rose, she left the lantern burning for the next weary traveller,
but slipped the coin into her pocket, a cool weight against her thigh. With each step back into town, she imagined his hand sliding into that same pocket,
fingers curling around the coin… and her.
