opening to an unfinished story

“I do not know how the pieces of my life all fit together,” she told him that night.

Only earlier that day, the morning ferry had rolled into the dock with the fog, heaving a heavy sigh as it’s body was once again tied down tight with heavy ropes to keep it still, let it rest. As the fog horn softly moaned its montonous, regular moan, the cars filed out of the boat, down the ramp, and onto the cobblestone streets. Normally, windows would be rolled down, hands would be reaching straight out as if to grab some salty island air, radios would be crackling summer tunes. But this morning, the first boat was heavy with people with heavy lungs filled with the heavy fog.

Not her though. Her lungs had become immune to the fog. For many summers and the occassional winter, fog had rolled in through her nose and out through her mouth. The fog had no affect on her. The only thing it told her body was that she was in fact on the island and this was the only place in the world she needed to be. No, the only shapeless shifting body that filled her lungs that morning  was the smoke of her cigarette.

Now a cresecent moon was climbing a ladder of stars. The sky was black and bottomless so that if it weren’t for the lights from the houses that dotted the horizon, it would have been near impossible to determine where the sky met the sea. There they sat on the dock that was folded inside one of island’s sandy bends, he sitting cross legged, she swinging her feet over the edge, leaning back on her hands.  An open bottle of wine sat between them next to two half empty glasses. He played with the cork in his fingers, ocassionaly holding it up to his nose to breathe in that beautiful intersection of earth and art. He was wondering what to say next to this girl with lungs full of cigerette smoke when his own were still processing the weight of the fog.

“I do not know how the pieces of my life all fit together.”