Seorae Island was in fact a mixture of auroras and personas. It swished, sighed, glimmered, and beckoned. Different voices resided at its shores than its land ones. I walked along the narrow beach, orange light wetting the sands, and stooped over the water glistening at my ankles. I felt like a queen of the island, no longer a college student.
For an island so narrow…it had many different characters reflected in its coastline and waving brambles. Californian in the blue-lavender sunset, hovering over shore, Europe-esque in its field of yellow rapeseed bloom. And the name Seorae Island was printed in Korean on a little wooden sign with a night sky and stars painted on it, reminding me I was home.
The eclectic voices of the island were all murmuring when the sun dipped. Sunset drew close to the strip, and I listened to the grasses. When the sands sighed, so did the waves; as I fell silent, the seagull squawked; a feather fell, and the tide withdrew like a stealthy beast over the shore.
There was an extraordinary fragility in the islandscape. How quivery the wildflowers were, brambly like stars and pale-yellow. How achingly sensitive the saltwater scent in the twilit air. I wanted to put my hand around the sun, clenching it, ceasing its descent; to immortalize this moment like a scene in delicate glass memory. The purity of the island was too much. I felt ugly; I wanted to hide. The island was a goddess, from its chalk cliffs to its wavering blossoms.
