© OF THE OCEAN by DELAFOI

The Man Who Leaked His Love.

The untold story of Jeremiah John.

I met Jeremiah John on a bench by the Dragon Tree, south of Son Servera. It was late august, and the Bunting Bird was getting ready to go.

Jeremiah was born an ocean, with the world’s knowledge floating within, and we set sail that same afternoon to cross the horizon before midnight.

We were sailors in a wet bar, and Jeremiah entertained the crowd with his tales of the ancient. He’d seen mountains rise past the earth’s surface and held hands with rivers as they carved scars in the dirt on their way home. He’d witness the moon kneel to the setting sun before it ripped the tide from the shore.

Jeremiah John was human by blood and native by soul, and the power vested in him was from God alone. He spoke in nature’s tongue and roamed freely among its creatures, and his love was unconditional and unforgiving.

‘Set sail, my brothers, set sail, my love’, he called from the top of a table, and the drunken crowd cheered. We were warriors back then, unexplored and unconquered, sworn never to give up.

I left at sunrise. Intoxicated by the fumes of the crowd, hopelessly in love with the scent of the early morning, I took the long way home, down the beach, and the trail leading past the lighthouse. God’s church was quiet as the voice of Jeremiah John danced across the plain, through the valleys of San Salvador, and across the hills of the Llevant.

“He’d been naked that night, dressed only in dreams and visions, playfully touching the world’s end with the tip of his fingers.”

Jeremiah was water before anyone knew thirst, gathering all and any of the drunken bastards willing to settle on his shores. And they did. While their dark, dirty secrets poured into his ocean. Like greedy parasites, they scorched his earth to build their homes, then multiplied, taking everything and bringing nothing.

The Bunting Bird finally returned, but Jeremiah’s boat never came back.

Yesterday the wind continued its whispering game around the Dragon Tree, but Jeremiah’s voice had changed. He’d been naked that night, dressed only in dreams and visions, playfully touching the world’s end with the tip of his fingers. But the devil’s work comes in all sizes, and now those same fingers trip across his wife’s kitchen window while he stares down on the rolling traffic wishing it were waves.

The rain came to help with our tears, but greed doesn’t offer any refills, and he who once reached all four corners of the earth now sighs as he sits down next to me.

We had coffee in tin mugs and Radio One on the wireless, and while the sun took her first steps across the beach, we wondered when we started taking the silent path across a squeaky floor.

Jeremiah John was born as an ocean, but the winter storms no longer reach him, and he no longer reaches the storm.

Once, we set sail to cross the horizon.

/// M.