Photo by Maël BALLAND on Unsplash
by Bronwen Griffiths
We tried to get to the lighthouse but it remained eternally distant, blocked by sandbars and rutted roads, a lighthouse out of time and place, its image insubstantial, hazy, and the low September light. Along the shoreline, which was supposed to lead us to the lighthouse, long wooden poles had been dug into the sand and there were piles of bone-white driftwood, and dozens of swallows battling the furious Mistral. Feeling unmoored, we huddled awhile against the shelter of the lifeboat station. But after, no matter how far we walked, the lighthouse came no closer.
I read that the earth had shuddered and trembled for nine whole days after a tsunami in Iceland and yet no one had witnessed this event, only earthquake monitors and computer screens. And though we saw those swallows diving along the shoreline and the sand whirling itself into fractals, that lighthouse would, for us, remain forever unwitnessed, something not grasped, no more than a blip on our screens.
Bronwen Griffiths lives in East Sussex, UK. She writes both long-form and short-form fiction. Her flash fiction stories have been published in a number of journals and online magazines. Her new novel, Longshore Drift, comes out in the spring of 2026.
