Margin

Last night, here on this island, the clouds were thin and stretched-out, and seemingly racing eastward like they were fleeing from the darkness. The sky went through shades of blue to black, and when darkness came it was starless. The storm blew-in during the night and I realised only then that the.wind-blown clouds had been a warning. I sheltered behind a dry stone wall, under the rotted-out shell of some kind of skiff that I had dragged down from the dunes. The rain hammered the boat all night and the sand below me was wet. On the few occasions that I ventured out to look at the ocean, I saw no lights. When the dawn came — at whatever time that was, as I had no way to know the time — the beach looked alien in the sepia light, scraped clean even of pebbles. I sat shivering in my damp clothes, hands between my legs, watching the breakers. There were a few scraps of wood here and there, but I had no way to make a fire. And my hat, I realised, was lost to the storm. On the margin of…