Fishing

We set off full of hope into the night as it grew blacker towards the end of the jetty where shorelights dimmed to a distant glow. Wind drove a swell to boom and crash against the pylons below sending a shudder through our feet. The air was bitterly cold. Baited hooks hung in the dark depths on the end of a taut line where every twitch and tug was telegraphed to a finger primed to detect that tell tale pull. The rod ready to be whipped upwards to imbed a hook into an open mouth. We would wait…and wait. An hour would pass. Time meant nothing to my father who would stare into a blank abyss in a trance like silence as if nothing existed outside of his vision into the great beyond. Two hours would pass. Not a single fish would bite. The only break was a pause to renew the bait on hooks. Bored, wanting to go, afraid to enter the sanctity of my fathers dreaming, I entered my own. Propped against the jetty railing, coiled against the cold, I crawled inwards towards my familiar home. Hours later, without a fish, we would walk back along the jetty still in our silence, both of us unable to tell each other where we had been, both of us alone.