Raey Kubiak

The light that came from everywhere hurt his eyes until they grew used to it. He looked at the small mast with its motionless sail, and around him the motionless sea. The sun burned without shadows. Somewhere near the equator, he thought, and stroked his arm, hardened like tanned leather.
He swayed with the boat and dipped his hand into the water, dark and speechless. In the sky he saw only blue.

He tightened the rope at his trousers, linen and dirty, and shook the legs free of the hardened salt. He counted his ribs and saw the muscles and tendons beneath his skin. He scratched his unbearable beard and his hair, which felt like a pelt. He licked his cracked lips and rubbed the back of his neck, stiff from sleep.

He carved a line on the mast to mark another day, but he did not count them. He moved the tiller back and forth and the water splashed, yet beyond it there was absolute silence. Without a point of reference, the boat moving was inconspicuous. He breathed the motionless air and lay down on the gunwale with his feet opposite.

At dusk he saw the millions of stars. At night he searched for some fire on a reef or shore, but the horizon appeared only indirectly, as a faint division between the vault of stars and the black and speechless sea spreading below without reflections. He resigned himself to the inevitable nature of the endeavor. Whatever had gone wrong was over.