'Mid Life' by Patience Mackarness

We stand leaning on the ship's rail, agreeing that the view’s magnificent.

This is the honeymoon we imagined thirty years ago. A white ship, twinkling from many portholes, anchored in a bay that was postcard-ready then, is  Instagram-ready now. 

That hot July, we could only afford an interrailing trip. We wandered port towns where alleys buzzed with refuse, fishguts lay slippery and stinking on the quays. Bars were dense with smoke, station  benches grimy like our fingernails, like the cheap bedsheets entangling our 
bodies.

In our stateroom with its three polished portholes, the linen is changed daily.

Moonrise is early tonight. Around the harbour curved and tiered like a Greek theatre, white houses with terracotta tiles track cobbled lanes uphill. Flowers spill from gardens and windowboxes, but their scent can't reach us across the greying water. You raise your new camera, my pearl-wedding gift to you, and try to capture the nuances of twilight. Arty shots will be posted to social media and gather heart emojis, our children will comment,  Jammy retirees, living the dream, and Old farts rock!

Perhaps this will be the evening when the faultline along the coast splits and groans, when the pretty terraces slide into the sea. Perhaps this will be the evening when a gunman sprays sleek diners with bullets and blood. Or the evening when you say, not looking at me, We need to talk. 

We watch dusk settle over fishing-boats that slip back into shadow between the arms of the harbour walls. Further out, there’s one yellow light. 

A lighthouse, signalling home.

A warning-buoy. 

Or the mast-lantern of a tall ship with white sails, faring outward.

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Patience Mackarness lives and writes in Brittany. Her work has been published by Moon City Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Lost Balloon, Lunch Ticket, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and elsewhere.