The Last Day the Sea Spoke

The Fisherman’s Tale

I am in my nineties now. My knees ache with every step, and my body bends as though I carry the weight of the tides themselves. Yet, each morning, I drag myself out of my small hut, the wood eaten by time, its roof patched with palm fronds, its walls perfumed with salt that the winds have pressed into the wood and I face the horizon. And in that fleeting moment, though my bones creak like an old boat, I am a boy again. The barefoot child chasing gulls, with nothing in his heart but dreams of becoming the greatest fisherman alive.

The sea raised me. It was not only a home but a voice. You could say the crabs and clams were my earliest companions. The sand was my playground, the tide my clock. At night, I would fall asleep to the taste of salt still on my lips, to the lull of waves that sounded like the steady breathing of a mother watching over me.

My father taught me the nets, the oars, the patience of waiting. But I never grew cold enough to kill without hesitation. I would lift a fish, see its scales flash like coins scattered by the sun, and my heart would ache. More often than not, I slipped them back, letting them vanish into the depths. I told myself it was admiration, not weakness. The sea seemed to forgive me, and even reward me with songs: the whistling dolphins, the laughter of the tide. I felt invited to its mysteries, allowed to watch, to listen, to marvel at the life it carried. Its voice was the music of my youth, and I never doubted it would sing to me forever.

Yes, the sea spoke. Not in words, but in its thousand voices. And I listened.

But then came the men with drills and steel. They did not listen. They tore into her flesh, and oil bled into her veins. The dolphins fled. The turtles washed up like corpses. The waves grew heavy, black, poisoned. The sea raged, and I raged with her but my voice was swallowed by the roar of drills and the hum of engines. I could do nothing but watch as the only friend I had ever known was desecrated.

The sea’s voice changed then. It grew hoarse, bitter. I could hear its anger in the restless currents, see its grief in the dark tide that stained the beaches. I tried to shout back, to tell it I understood, that I, too, was angry but how can a man comfort something as vast as the ocean?

Now I am left with silence. I come to the shore every morning and sit with her still body, remembering the music of tides long gone. Sometimes I wonder if she is angry with me for failing her. Other times I fear it is not anger but death that holds her tongue.

And I sit here with that silence pressing on my chest, and I remember a line I once read in the Old Man and the Sea:

“They beat me, Manolin. They truly beat me.”

Yes. They beat me, and they beat the sea too. The companies, the drills, the oil, the plastic—they beat us both until her voice went out forever. And though I am still here, breathing, I know I was defeated alongside her.

But I cannot stop coming. Even in silence, I sit at her side like a widower at the grave. I whisper my apologies to the horizon, hoping she still hears.

I wait for her voice…..just once more. A sigh, a ripple, a word. Something.

But the sea does not answer. The last day she spoke has long passed, and I remain an old man alone with silence, carrying her memory like a wound that will not heal.