He Made Himself a Barren Island

This unhappy man in the midst of opulence, lived like a discolored pale precious stone in a box of rare jewels, and was always sad, like a dry wood in the lush verdant forest. He got up one morning more dejected than he was the morning before, threw the flower embossed curtains off the crystal clear window open to the sky. Looked out to see, maybe for the first time, the crimson sun rising in the flaming horizon that painted an enticing fresco of rhythm on the lilac flow of the meandering river. As colors of dawn touched his pale heart softly like the petals of the full-bloom spring flowers, he heard the murmuring beckon of the river, drifted to him on the wings of rustling leaves. With a delightful sensation he never felt before, he walked with his face flooded with purple sunshine to the bank of the river where he saw a sand bar, its golden slope cradling a small tree, its boughs dancing. The enthralling scene he thought was the expression of happiness and joy that he never knew existed, that the lone tree could generate as it grew free in an isolated barren bed of dry sand bar in the river. So, he sailed across the beautiful blue coral sea to a distant barren island made of silver sands, and like the tree on the sand bar let his life take root in the desolateness of nowhere under the azure sky. The dawns ascended for him at the edge of horizon with pristine display of chromatic colors to cheer, in the midst of gorgeous sunset rhapsody the sea gilded his mind with tapestry of liquid gold. But he couldn’t spread his hands out in delight through the embracing air toward the sky, the way the boughs of the forlorn tree did in joy, because he had made himself a barren island. (Inspired by metaphorical imagery) February 11, 2020 Contest : Let The Pens Flow-Narrative Sponsor : Jenish Somadas