There's a statue of a woman up on the high cliff. Her eyes fixate on the horizon, her face as still as the rock on which she stands. Moss licks at her feet, grass threatening to mount her legs and pull her down. She burns in the summer and freezes in the winter. Rain lashes her, soaking into her cracks. Her gaze is resolute, motionless, icy. She holds a spear in her hands, long and sharp as the day it was carved. Down below, waves crash at the base of cliff. She stands there, isolated and proud.
She has stood there for centuries or more, watching as the water caresses earth and carries it away so slowly. Bit by bit, the cliff shrinks, the edge drawing ever closer to her heavy feet. Someday, she'll have to choose between taking a single step back or falling. I can almost see her shattering into a million pieces at the base of the cliff, the air snapping up her dust. It'll take centuries before erosion reaches her, but I have every faith she'll still be there. She's waiting for something inevitable. I wish I knew what.
When we laugh and holler on the beach late at night, dancing by the fire and water, we can just about see her in the distance. I like to think she casts her gaze downwards to watch us and sees in us a modicum of the joy she never expiriences. I like to think I can feel her gaze piercing through us as our guardian angel on high. She loves us, I like to think. Why else does she stay? Why else would she stay on the high cliff, watching the sun set and rise, watching the clouds blow over, watching the rains and the winds?
Sometimes, when it's storming hard, I can see her silhouette from my window, cast in lightning for a fragment of a second. She burns herself into my eyes, forcing her way into my memory. I almost wonder what it would taste like to stand there too, to fade into the edges of eternity with her. To know that each setting sun is not another count towards the end of my life but just a shade of the infinity I witness. Each passing second is no longer an opportunity lost. I imagine the weight of infinity sinking through my skin and it's warm and pleasant. It's familiar, like warm baked bread. It's comfortable like the sun on my skin after a cold night.
On long autumn days, I'd brace my jacket against the wind and hike the circuitous trail up the cliff. She doesn't move at my arrival. But when I sit at her feet, legs carelessly dangling into the open air, I can feel her hand on my shoulder. It's warm and soft, stone and flesh in one, strong and confident. In that moment I know that I could never fall. She would never let me. Clouds overhead, overcast and angry, I'll study the sea before us. Her touch bracing me, I'll gaze into the waves and struggle to see whatever it is that she does. I want to spot whatever she's waiting for so I can whisper into her ears that it's okay, that her vigilance can end. She can cast her spear into the air finally and, her brutality wrought, she can learn to take up peace.
I want to walk the trail with her, our fingers intertwined. Her features in profile are pristine, cold, delicate. She's equal parts strong and vulnerable, a perfectly monotonous carving of a perfectly average woman. In the setting sun, I'd study the way light chips off her marble chin, her lively eyes, her flared nose. I'd walk her home and show her how the world had changed. I'd show her how to live once again and maybe in turn she could show me how stand on a cliff for an eternity.
But the threat never comes and once again, it is dark out. I trip back home slowly, cautiously, alone. She stays on the cliff. Still waiting. Still watching.
Maybe tomorrow.