A Lighthouse for Elian
written by: Monika Ajay Kaul
The sea was rarely kind in these parts.
It raged with a bitter loneliness, as though it knew too many stories and had no one to tell them to. But Ira had always listened. Thirty-two years she’d kept the lighthouse company, long after ships stopped needing her, long after her husband’s boots stopped squeaking on the spiral stairs. The sea had taken him too, in a storm that had no name.. just foam and silence.
She stayed.
The keepers before her had gone mad, or drunk, or both. Ira simply calmed down. She swept the floors. Tended the rusted gears. Lit the lamp. Some nights, she spoke aloud, just to keep her voice from becoming another ghost among the stones.
It was in the salt-bent crags below the eastern wall, where the waves broke against the rocks like forgotten dirges, that she found the bottle.
Sea-glass green, scarred by barnacle and time. Wedged between stones as if placed by hand. She almost didn’t see it. Almost let it stay.
But something in the wind pulled her gaze down.
Retrieving it was a battle. The tide bit her ankles. The rocks scraped her palm. But it came loose at last, clinging into her hand like a memory refusing to be buried. Inside… paper, curled and yellowing.
A letter!
She dried it by the hearth, carefully, mumbling to it like a midwife coaxing a breath from brittle lungs. The script was hurried, but legible. And alive.
***
The Letter:
To whoever finds this, or perhaps to no one at all,
I never intended to write a last letter. It always felt like something melodramatic… the stuff of novels and bad plays. But here I am, tucked into a foxhole of silence, scribbling words I can’t unread, hoping they will matter.
I am.. or was.. a soldier. They called me Elian.
The war began when I was twenty-one. It’s ending now, or maybe we just stopped counting the bodies. Either way, I’m tired. Not of fighting. That ended long ago. I’m tired of remembering.
There were good days. I must write that before I forget it’s true. A boy in a burnt village once gave me a plum from his pocket. Dusty, half-squashed, but he smiled like he’d given me the world. That single act of grace has weighed heavier in my memory than all the orders I followed. It told me I was still a man. Not just a weapon.
Sometimes I think this war was just a mirror. We saw ourselves too clearly in it, and we couldn’t look away.
Luca died humming a lullaby, eyes open toward the indifferent sky. We joked once that if we ever made it home, we’d build a house by the sea. We both knew we never would.
I had a mother once. She smelled of sandalwood and hope. I was cruel to her before I left. Not in words, but in absence. I never said goodbye, never thanked her for the courage she stitched into my bones. If you have a mother, write to her. Even if she’s gone, write anyway. There are words that must exist, whether heard or not.
I write now because there are thoughts that need a shore. Maybe you’re that shore. Maybe you’re just a stranger with calloused fingers and salt in your hair. But if you’re reading, then maybe the sea chose you. Maybe you’re the keeper of stories, as I am their prisoner.
You might wonder what redemption looks like. I don’t know. I’m not sure I deserve it. But I’ve learned something: guilt never ages. It stays young. Fresh. It finds new ways to bloom inside you.
There were birds once… a flock flying over the trenches, clean and unafraid. And for one moment, I felt what they must feel. To rise above it all. To see the senselessness and still choose flight.
I once kissed a girl named Anya. She read poetry in a voice that sounded like dusk. I promised her I’d return before the olives ripened again. They did. I didn’t.
I write this not for rescue. Not for fame. Only for recognition. I lived. I laughed once. I wept until the earth swallowed the salt from my eyes. I was here.
I’ve done things that live under my skin like parasites. They whisper at night, when even dreams are silent. But still… there was good in me. Maybe there still is. You, who reads this… do you believe a man becomes what he’s done, or what he regrets?
If there is peace, it is not found in victory. It is found in the moments before surrender, when you choose to be human again, even if no one is watching.
I have no heirs. No medals. Just these words, and the ocean to carry them. If they reach you, they’ve already done more than I ever could in uniform.
Remember me, not as a soldier. Remember me as someone who once wanted to come home.
Elian
***
Ira folded the letter with a gentleness she hadn’t used in years.
She didn’t cry. Her tears had grown selective with age, but her throat ached like it did when the wind howled too long.
She placed the letter in her old desk, where she kept things the sea had given her. Feathers, bits of bone, coins worn to smooth warmth. Gifts. Messages.
Then she lit the lamp again… not for ships, not anymore… but for Elian.
For all the Elians.
For the ones who lived in the space between memory and myth. The ones whose stories had no home.
She spoke his name aloud, once, so it wouldn’t vanish. So it would be real.
That night, the sea was still. Not silent. But stock-still. As if even it was listening.
NOTE:
Based on the Prompt – The Last Letter
- A Lighthouse for Elian - June 29, 2025
- The Prism of Parting - May 19, 2025
- Wings of Vengeance - April 26, 2025
