The Sun is a Light in a Dark Basement

from before I really knew anything

It’s 6:57 p.m., May 18th, 2024.

We’re in Hersonissos, on a beach with large, rocky sand, near a hotel we aren’t staying at. We aren’t staying here at all, in the village—this morning we came on the motorcycle from Heraklion, where we live, 20 minutes along the coast.

The sand is dusty and makes me feel even paler than I am. With the sun beginning to sink behind a rocky cliff, the flies are out now, and they’re landing on my bare feet and arms.

We spend time laying on our bellies, picking out all the most vibrant and beautiful rocks from the sand. We pile them on a shirt and now they watch me write, and they watch him read, and mark the margins of the book with his pen.

The air is full of dust from Africa, and it has made the sea and the sky the same color. On the horizon they blend into one blue-grey expanse that sailboats glide gentle away into. The tide is coming in, and the waves crashing on the rocks get progressively louder as we sit. Though it’s the beginning of summer and it’s been hot all day, a chill has crept into the air—although maybe I only think that because today, so much of what is normally blue is grey and dark.

The sun is a light in a dark basement. The sun is a reading lamp in a child’s bedroom at night.

Through the smoke, the other end of the island is only a suggestion, not a promise or a guarantee. Craggy rock islands near the shore look like sleeping dogs. The tide creeps ever closer, the chill grows stronger. The flies swarm. Beside him, on the rocks, a spray-painted sign says NUDIST, but there are no nudists here. Looking down, I am covered in mosquito bites, and a cut from walking into the glass coffee table two days ago mars my shin.

I give Fotis my notebook and let him read the poem I had written about him weeks ago, before I even really knew anything.

We decide we need a vessel for the rocks we’ve collected. Fotis takes the empty plastic sleeve his cigarette filters were in and melts one end closed with a lighter. I fill it with tiny pebbles, the most important ones first, the greens and oranges and pinks. It gets too full—we aren’t picky enough, and have found too much beauty in nature. He gives me another empty plastic sleeve and tells me to put one inside the other. It goes smoothly at first, but around the middle, the rocks are too loosely packed, and I can’t get any purchase. My hands are sweaty and slippery, and I’m faced with this impossibly tiny physical task—it draws all my focus. The flies are driving me crazy, and I’m getting more and more frustrated with the unyielding plastic sleeve. I give up, but what I’d done was enough, as it often is, and he melts the excess plastic closed.

While I wait for him to finish his book, I climb up the rocks and stand at the top, looking for soft flat places that don’t hurt my bare feet. I keep going further—I want to be out of sight. I crouch down on the clifftop and watch the dim sun sinking slowly through the sky.