He Became a Barren Island

This unhappy man in the midst of flowing opulence lived like a discolored precious stone in a box of rare jewels, and was always sad like a dry wood in a lush green forest. He got up one morning more dejected than the morning before, threw the flower embossed curtains off the crystal clear window and looked out to see, maybe for the first time, the crimson sun rising in the flaming horizon that painted frescos of rhythm on water of the river. He heard the beckon of the river in the rustle of the leaves as the cool morning breeze ruffled them, and as the colors of the dawn touched his heart softly like the petals of flowers embracing the hard grey ground, a delightful sensation he never felt before, and as the call of the river floated silently to his senses the way the drifting clouds talk to the mute sky, he walked with his face flooded with soothing sunshine to the bank of the river where he saw a sand bar rising proudly from the water in the middle of the river and spreading a golden sloping bed for a small tree to grow whose branches were dancing in the western wind and the emerald leaves were shining in sunburst splendor. These he thought were the expressions of happiness and joy that the lone tree could generate as it grew free in an isolated barren bed of dry sand bar. So he traveled across the coral sea to a distant barren island and like the tree he let his life take root in desolateness and lived to see the dawns come with pristine colors to cheer, the sea become tapestry of liquid gold in ecstatic sunset hours, but he couldn’t spread his hands out in the embalming air the way the branches of the forlorn tree did in joy, his eyes didn’t shimmer under the sun soaked sky the way the leaves of the lonely tree did in happiness because he became a barren island. October 8, 2018 Contest : Fiction - October 2018 Writing Challenge Sponsored by : Dear Heart a.k.a. Broken Wings