A Lighthouse Named Absence

The lighthouse’s automated nature was illustrated by absence. A light without a keeper, an electric candle that blew itself out, then relit. A solitary flicker appeared each evening…then stopped.

The boy floating above it was a different matter altogether.

Reporters came and went. By late evening, the moon was a scythe hanging over the floating boy. Its golden frown dipped lower, beckoned by the water’s soft ripples…

‍ ‍Aster, Jean-Marc corrected. His name is Aster, please do not put this on the record. Thank you. 

Jean-Marc was a florist. Between the university’s graduation grind and the sporadic flurry of July weddings pushed to June and May, if possible, they loved caring for each delicate stem. Thy knew how to coax feeling, tender, tremendous, impeccably boisterous feeling from such tiny buds; hyacinths, harebells, lilacs, illiums, asters, cosmos, adder’s mouth, begonias, milkweed, sweetgrass,  juliet roses…

“He was composing. An opera,” they offered as a slight, tense explanation when it was clear they had no other choice. “He comes here late at night to be inspired.”

The image of Aster sleeping next to the florist’s fridge came to their mind; the boy only wrapped in a bundle of ochre-flush pink and pearlescent waves last summer.

The conversation had opened briefly, then swept its petals shut:

‍ ‍An iris was once a symbol of love. Now it is just a symbol of pity. Of burial.

‍ ‍What? They had snapped, disbelieving that a mouse could scurry in, let alone a boy. 

‍ ‍Your roses are sad. They are all hermaphrodites and so they want lovers queer as they. Don’t you see, they are dying early because they are kept behind glass?

Jean-Marc had not expected that. They had expected weeping, an explanation of the sorry state of the curled up being in an oversized…Nothing. Not  a leaflet of speech passed between them. It would be another two days before Aster spoke again:

‍ ‍If they do not know I am not from here, I will be safe. 

‍ ‍Safe from what

Aster shrugged. 

‍ ‍Leave me here. Do not call anyone. 

Jean-Marc leaned on the broom handle, spraying a pattering of half-dried daffodil petals into the dustpan. They would have offered water or solid food, but maybe nothing of the sort was appropriate. Maybe plant food mixed into a spray bottle would suffice. They sighed. 

‍ ‍Or what?

‍ ‍I can help. He spoke softly, under tendrils of dark curls. A pair of golden eyes peeked out. I can hear them. I know what each one wants. As long as I stay here. Please. 

An agreement was reached by sunrise:

‍ ‍You will work in the shop during the day. At night you are free to compose or whatever else you please. It is a trial. For now. 

‍ ‍No. Not for now. Until…

‍ ‍Until what?

‍ ‍My…friend said he would meet me here. He would be here when I made it. He would.

Aster’s insistence had reminded them of lilacs, tall and taut, with burgundy centres. Or maybe they just had not slept that night. 

Suddenly, the reporter tapped their shoe louder.

“So…what?” She badgered them. “You were his employer? Friend? Family?”

“He works down the street,” Jean-Marc lied, leaning on their cane.

‍ ‍I should have just brought the broom handle, they thought, warily. It is less conspicuous. 

  “We go to trivia night on Thursdays. It is probably just the mist playing tricks with our eyes. Rainy season after all. Some seasons even we locals are not used to it.”

###

The year after, Jean-Marc heard it on the edge of Spring. A series of threads embroidered themselves in the honeyed air. They were filled with soil and…sweetness, a deep and watery sweetness that galvanized in a rich sapphire hue.

‍ ‍I must be exhausted, Jean-Marc thought, trying to see where the colours came from. 

Slippershod, they hastily threw a robbin’s egg linen robe over their shoulders and walked down the cobblestone until they were close enough to taste the air, a heavy enchanting blue. A faint sound at first, but the colours became more noise: bells melted as ice against the coastline, harpsichords, violas floating starward, staircases crumpling into the next movement of music. Not architecture. No. Not at all. This was birdflight dipping into whitecaps before diving, searching…

At the clearing, they could hear it before they could see Aster barefoot and trembling several feet above the ocean.

The sound grew in tremulous gigantic waves of glowing ivy:

‍ ‍I live a hundred years under the sea. The sea burns my lungs. I return to you in every life. 

‍ ‍Life is a coat I wear, and in the blueness of my death, I find you. Pulling me under white-foam and the wicked ache of possibility, pulling me into an abyss; this is your bluesong precipice. 

‍ ‍Did you ever call for me? 

‍ ‍Did you know, I hear you still?

###

Jean-Marc bit into his palm, weeping.

‍ ‍Pick up the damn phone.

“Look, you are the only number on his phone, so if you could fucking help…”

‍ ‍He is not like you or me. They wanted to scream. He does not want a song you could add to a playlist. He wants a symphony.

They waited on a bench by the weathered bakery door, grabbed a too-hot cup of coffee, then went back to the florist’s.

The lights were all off.

Jean-Marc kept dialing until dead air became its own recitatif. In the teal gloom, the flowers in the fridge began to fade.

###

Aster had come down. 

He looked tiny in an impossible way that reminded Jean-Marc of lavender-blue pansies nestled together in their plastic pots.

“It’s a song for someone I am…for.” Aster explained carefully. “I do not have the words for it here. I can barely switch between English and French when I am not singing. I would unbloom totally if I never held him.”

“I could help you find him.”

Jean-Marc felt guilty. To them, Aster was not a symbol, nor a singular genius separated from their life. Aster was a little boy who greeted customers with more kindness than they could ever muster. They chatted with old folks and kids with sticky hands alike, twitterpated students going on first dates, single parents giving it another go…

Everyone left smiling. Even those who came in grief; Thank you for not pushing me to buy anything, I did not know this wildflower was once a symbol of mourning…

Aster hummed. They sat together near the shore. A curl of dandelions wove around Jean-Marc’s ankles. Jean-Marc saw the gleam in his golden eyes, pink moonlight spilt into his soft curls. They wanted to hold him up where the stone could allow him to be a beacon without waking up from the drop, bruised or worse. They wanted to be that strong. They had ancestors who might have known how to before—now Jean-Marc was left to tend all that was left of their grandfather’s shop with ennui and an unclear eye towards the future. 

‍ ‍But I could hold you. At least, for a little while. That way someone can do the levitating for you and you can be up there all the time. They thought. No narratives about spectacular people who die alone for their art. That would be cool for once. 

Aster coaxed dandelions to tickle their kneecaps.

Jean-Marc was about to ask if it hurt, if it was something that helped with any sort of process, if the flowers understood, but all questions came to a sudden halt. 

“It does not mean you could not be for me.” he spoke plainly, twirling a few between his nimble fingers. “Stamen, pistil, calyx.”

Bathed in dusk’s peacock feathers, Aster leaned over and kissed them. Straddling Jean-Marc’s lap, he placed a crown of bright yellow flowers in their long, grey-gold hair. 

The sky sounded different when they kissed; not sapphire but sea-drowned blue. A dazzling abyss; give me your solitude, and I will give you music. It was a depth of rich, aquamarine that permeated everything; cornflowers bursting open, lazuli bird wings, the dusky fingers at the edge of smeared stars, the last dip of sunset into Night. 

‍ ‍You can hear me? They thought, and found it strange to hear their own thoughts, amplified, swimming, streaking along the dark-blue that poured open around them. 

‍ ‍That is when I live, when I hear the world…

Jean-Marc’s thoughts fell as petals fall onto crashing waves:

‍ ‍Did you fall asleep on the floor of my shop because I am sick?Was I the first place on dry land you could swim to?

‍ ‍We are all sick in our own ways.

‍ ‍Some sicknesses kill the land, others invade our bodies with lesions white as snow. Then in winter, the snow dots the pesticides on this unceded territory. Then, the government houses these sicknesses and makes people pay for them. If they believe you, you can get a scan early. If they do not, you can shut up and die at the back of the line like everyone else…

Aster held their hands against Jean-Marc’s cheeks, kissing them again; the blue turned lighter and lighter. For a moment, it became the crest of a wave, the first dye in a spool, the tender brush of jay’s wings in a nest.

‍ ‍…but in your heart, you are sick with longing, and that is what you hear above all else…

***

Jean-Marc waited. They knew the lighthouse was not monitored closely because it was automated. They outwaited reporters and local influencers. Police came and left; it is serious but it is nothing we need to be called for. The message was clear, there was no floating boy. Someone made that up.

A smattering of gulls circled Aster before flying to the left, hiding from the incoming storm. Soon, rain would thrash the ebbtide, flooding the pebble-strewn beach up to the grassy patches before town. There would be a flood warning. Maybe a few shops would lose power. Nothing more. 

‍ ‍He is going to be here, Jean-Marc thought, not for the first time, then startled when they heard a distant knock. Please do not be maintenance, do NOT be maintenance, do not…!

A rain-soaked man with a buzzcut pushed himself inside, walker clattering with aplomb. He looked at Jean-Marc.

“‘M Samuel. I came about the camera question you had. Do you maintain the building?”

“Uh…yes. Let me explain.”

They showed Samuel around, careful to avoid the side of the light overlooking the sea. “So the light…I think it is broken. You can fix cameras, right?”

“How did you know, anyways? I only advertise picture development.”

Jean-Marc began the story; the mysterious appearance of the boy, the light, and finally…Samuel. Your name in his waterlogged close. Your name instead of any documentation. Your name instead of any family or passports or certificates, so if you could just explain what the hell is going on–

Samuel’s eyes widened before he shrugged.

“It’s really nice talking and all,” Samuel said, beginning to leave. “This is not about me. Hope you find the fellow”

“Maybe you do not understand, he said—”

Samuel shook his head. His eyes looked tired from the weight of not sleeping.

“I understand perfectly. My friend is long dead.”

Jean-Marc went outside to see if anything had changed. They hoped the other man followed. 

“Aster,” they called, but only the icy strings of Winter answered. 

###

Above, he could hear it. Aster floated around them. Aster brought them to his chest and kissed down the frost-glazed vines that tethered them to the ground; I must be careful with you. For if I lose you, I will lose someone who still knows how to be light…

Still, Aster could not speak. The music around them was deep blue. It did not budge. 

‍ ‍How am I here? They tried. 

‍ ‍Nothing can reach me here, anyways.Only water and air, and…

‍ ‍And what? how do I get you down? How…

‍ ‍…Nothing but the sound of you, dear creature. Crumpled in the breeze as turquoise and  bluebells. Here, you are a nocturne. Open your mouth. Lean back and open your mouth. Blaze, softly, blaze, my wild fern. Aureate, become a beacon unto yourself. Through the arpeggios of deep sighs, wrestle, flush, bloom; come apart in my hands and know, we are never coming down…

###

Jean-Marc felt the boy’s warm embrace and marveled at how effortless it was to float. The music changed as they floated under a dripping cobalt stream. Somehow, it sounded older than classical music they used to play at the shop on an old victrola. Here, between light and notes, he could hear the man Aster was searching for: a pretty thing, lithe but solid, with a buzzcut and…oh! Handsome, yes. Quite handsome.

Aster pulled them towards the man and the three of them embraced. Their kisses changed the symphony; more vines burst forth and dandelions turned into fiery candlewicks. It sounded like this:

‍ ‍Lover, I am here. Do not worry. Time is not the reason flowers cease to bloom. Time is the only way they still have a chance to grow.

                                                                    ###

Jean-Marc did not say much in the heat of their naked splendor, but working as a florist did have its perks; they never forgot a face.

They tipped their cane against the lock.

“Look,” they said. “Your friend is alive. He is…here. But he is not what you think.”

“I think my friend was passionate and bright. That was his problem. He wanted to leave all this behind. And when he did I was glad…” Samuel did not meet their eyes, buttoning up the collar of his overcoat. “I wanted to go too. I was not brave enough.”

He reached into the pocket of his old denim jacket, covered in punk bands’ pins and fraying at the cuffs. In it, Jean-Marc could hear the beginning of a B-minor chord, strummed across a mandolin; you are home for someone, home for someone who never had one…

Samuel handed over a stack of rumpled, brown-twined letters, but did not watch the other read them. He did not reach out as Jean-Marc’s hands shook. He could barely stop himself from crumpling to the ground. Or, cursing himself for not being able to truly run, for not being fast enough to see where the boy might really be…

“In this world, I can still be brave for another.” Jean-Marc said finally, tears in their eyes. “I can be here…but I do not know what to do, either.”

                                                                     ###

For three weeks Aster floated. Then, another seven. 561 days passed. Another 321. Add fifty, divide by seven.

The two men swept the lighthouse. Jean-Marc moved some flowers to a new location overnight. Samuel helped. By day, they sold bouquets and garden-ready bulbs, careful to never lead customers to the sea side of the lighthouse. If one was by the counter, the other watched outside. At night, the two of them pulled up chairs to watch. Sometimes, Samuel fiddled with the light. He was able to change out the different bulbs, the mercury levels, anything that might drift its reflective colour. He kept the deck clean and never wavered from staring just beyond its point. One night, before the last snowfall of March, Jean-Marc caught him talking to himself;

‍ ‍Hello darling, it is good to see you here. Still here. I miss you. I never knew how much of me was missing either, until I met you.

                                                        ###

Slowly, snow made sleeping unbearable.

“He must have seen something in you.” Samuel said, bitter and careful. “To trust you with that music.”

‍ ‍Just like how he talks about his camera films. Jean-Marc, thought. About the way the lens makes light. About Aster and…

“He saw something in everyone. He did not tune into the constant stream of noise the world uses to push people against one another. He never hated anything in his life. I was special because I love him. I love you, too.”

Jean-Marc kissed Samuel. They did not know if the other remembered the light, if they could hear Aster, too; or was it all a dream to them, a forgotten line one hums in the bath or picking the dead leaves out of a window box? They had been too shy to ask. But now, against the lighthouse’s hardwood floor, they leaned across him, aching hip pressed against Samuel’s thighs. Samuel tasted of ironweed and blazing stars. They wrapped Samuel’s arms around theirs; miss him, miss him, miss him. It was easy to hear, this ultramarine aria, this frozen whalesong; miss him, miss him, miss him, too—

Samuel was here, delicious to behold in the glow of their strange union. They peeled off the rest of his layers, and underneath they were warm.

“I-I understand if…”

For a moment, Samuel seemed to close. 

Jean-Marc caught their fingers, holding them open.

“I can hear you,” they whispered, nose pressed against the pulse point of their neck. “It’s alright.”

The shadows pooled around their lovemaking, receding into a blue that became lighter and lighter:

‍ ‍Kiss me, meet me here, let me feel him between us, around us. Let him invite this world and all others into us. You are kissing me and I can hear the snow as he once did. You are kissing me back and there is the darkest veil of night. There is the moon wrapped around his own shadow. There is the charcoal burning and the starlings underside of a wing; there is the beauty of the bruise; you who shine because you grew towards so much resplendent darkness…

                                                                     ###

Their bodies were a shadowplay across the beacon’s usual light. A stutter. A blip. A strike of non-lightning in the usual glare of the running days. Under the covers, a note began; a twinkling thread of periwinkle…

A few hours later, the sky was still dark. It would be another full day of snow. This time, there would be no greying daylight to stretch in between.

The two men stared at the lighthouse. The snow-storm thrashed. Flakes fell in a long, dulcet haze. The periwinkle glow soon spread over the entire horizon. Its colour ran in extraordinary arcs. No cameramen would dare be out in this, the island’s most anguished lament. No one was paid enough by the local weather station. 

Regardless, they both climbed the icy ladder toward the light. The slippery steps could barely fit them together, though they gripped each other.

  Aster had grown frail. He was free-floating, far away—a creature unreachable in his infinite prisms.

Samuel kissed Jean-Marc’s temple. In its frost-silhouetted wake, there was a streak, a blotchy lavender mark.

Above, there was a terrible noise like a seizing faultline. It rang out, brassy and quivering, a quake between beats of an underwater volcano, or a stroking heart. There was the slide of a shamisen when it misses the strings upon a bow, or the ashy, percussive remnants of a harp that once was plucked near the seasides of Pompeii. 

Aster moved. 

###

Samuel touched the tip of the light without letting go of Jean-Marc’s hand. Instead, from the lavender-blue stain upon his brow the colour spread down across Jean-Marc’s arm. They swirled in vines that Aster had loved so much. 

Aster’s eyelids, covered in layers of frost, fluttered.

Jean-Marc wept. They thought of the small boy with enough light inside to make their whole shop pour open, proliferating petal after petal. Nights between them would dazzle with total inflorescence. He might not recognize Samuel’s voice after so long frozen. Sotto voce, Jean-Marc sang into the night air, waiting for Samuel to join them. They poured every memory of Aster into the swarm of periwinkle, growing more lovely as light glittered through fractals of snow.

They could hear echoes with the snowflakes. He would be in both of their arms soon. He could hear it, tremulous and full-throated as a nightingale’s warble; they could hear their own voices bouncing back, reflecting, refracting, surrounding all three of them:

‍ ‍You can fall, Aster. Falling is only a matter of time in this light. We’ll always be here to catch you.