The island that isn't there

Every island on the map was once a rumour.

A sailor, at night. Only the stars.

A smell of land where there was only sea.

Birds coming from the wrong direction.

He told them at the harbour. They laughed.

He went back to looking that way.

One night. Then another. For years.

One morning the line on the horizon was no longer fog.

Today that island has a name.

You were six.

A sheet of squared paper. Felt-tip pens without their caps.

An island. A single tree. A house too big for the tree.

A dog, I think. Or a cloud with legs.

You had made the sea purple, because the blue had run out.

You gave it to me and said that one day you would take me there. Then you went back to playing.

That island existed.

You had just drawn it.

Then you grow up.

Grades arrive, interviews, forms.

The "right questions", asked by people who love you.

How long will it last. Why put yourself through it. Are you sure?

Most people, at some point, stop drawing the island.

It doesn't happen all at once.

No one tears up the page.

On an ordinary Tuesday you think about something else.

The Tuesday after, too.

The island stays there, with no one looking at it.

Islands no one looks at turn back into fog.

Then you end up talking about what you would have wanted in the voice people use for the weather.

A rain that has passed.

You are still before that Tuesday.

I never threw your drawing away.

The corners are folded and the purple has turned grey.

You can still see the tree.

The house too, still too big.

It's the second drawer on the right.

I never locked it.

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Questions for reflection

What was the island you drew as a child like?

What did the "right questions", asked by people who love you, take from you?

Which dreams do you talk about today as a rain that has passed?