by Emily Hung
Inspired by Pawel Kyczynsky’s “Ocean”
The little boy held his toy sailboat as he looked upon the great sea of words. They were beautiful, of all different shapes and sizes, painted across infinite pages of aged paper. Words moved on the page like waves, and for a while, he watched the words crash and merge together before disappearing into the horizon. He longed to understand their meaning, to finally decipher the codes that held such wisdom and beauty.
He set the boat at the margin of the lapping shore of letters and gently pushed it in. The wind filled its sails with wisdom and the ocean spray deposited letters into the wooden hull. Then, pushed by the powerful meaning of the words in the waves, the sailboat drifted back to shore, gently rocking back into the hands of the boy.
His small hands scooped the letters and he held them delicately. The letters glistened like diamonds in the sun, and the boy was mesmerized as he watched them tango and spin in his palms. Within seconds, the letters began to slip through the cracks of his fingers and melt back into the ocean.