I see the gleams and glints among the rolling waves, peaks of light that waver and bob. In slow lazy curls, they approach me.

I’ve done my daily jog around the island, scanning the distant waves for the silhouette of a ship that never arrives. Yesterday, I went on to collect wood and forage. Today, I make a second trip around, slowly, collecting the bottles that have washed ashore in a huge sack that I drag behind me. There are always more coming in; if I kept picking them up as they arrive, I’d never be done. Keeping a daily routine is important; it keeps you sane.

I complete the sweep, dragging the heavy sack to the section of beach by the glass pit. I let the sack slip out of my hands behind me, and walk on a bit towards the sea. I stand in the sun, sweating, heat bathing my skin. I want to cool off, and I don’t want to swim, so I stand in the breeze for a while under the shade of a small stand of palm trees. There’s still a part of me that complains about how unfair this all is. I remember when I had choices, when my world wasn’t circumscribed by undrinkable water and food was plentiful and time was more than one monotonous buzzing tone behind my eyes.

I turn and head to the rough lean-to on the beach which stands by the deep pit and its pile of glass and plastic bottles. I sit cross legged in the shade, take a sip from a bowl of brackish spring water, and begin. I open the sack’s sandy mouth and reach inside to the cool moist depths.

The bottles rattle about my hands as I reach among them. The plastic ones are often sand-scoured and sometimes rough. The rarer glass bottles are smooth but may pick up a frosted patina if they’ve been in use for a long time. They are the ones that tend most to sink, of course, shattered on rocks or losing their corks and carrying their messages to the sea floor with a forlorn little blurp.

I take up a clear plastic two-litre soda bottle, its label lost, and uncap it. It has a palm leaf inside it. Leaves are the most easily obtainable writing surface, but are fragile. If the writers are smart, they leave the stem facing up towards the neck of the bottle. This one had some experience. I get a fingerhold on the stem and pull it gently out of the bottle, rustling and crackling, and spread out the brown leaf before me.

“Greetings from afar! I assume that someone is reading one of my messages, for I have read many others. Of course, the chance that you will write back to me and I will receive the wave-tossed reply is slim to none. Sp please consider this a general sort of conversational opener, and pass it along! Here are some things I might have replied, in response to you what you might have said:

“To what degree do you continue to be mistaken for a hat?

“To what degree do you mistake what you do for art?

“Do you dissect butterflies?”

I blink and look up from the letter at the windswept beach. How many footprints I must have made here, all the anxious pacings, dances of joy and despair, the running and panicked flights; and not one step remains in the sand. I might as well not have been here, for all that the waves and wind care. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and put the letter aside on the leaf pile.

The next bottle is green. The plastic label had been removed and the white layer inside it had been used for writing the note within. This is a clever tactic, if one can find a natural ink that will adhere to it. The author seems to have used his own blood, which is flaking away.

“I remember a day long ago when the world had seemed particularly dry and out of sorts, and there was a fireworks show for some event or another that evening. I watched the fireblossoms ascending to the sky, and I felt nothing, none of the joy of childhood upon seeing works of wonder. And I was horrified and came to tears, and I prayed that it would not be taken from me, I prayed that I would not lose my ability to find joy in fireworks. And this was granted to me, I have not lost it yet. But it is a delicate thing…”

I set the letter onto the plastics pile, and reach for the next bottle. This one was a jar of peanut butter, and it is still slightly greasy inside and fragrant. I pull out a thick folded packet. When one finds durable paper, it is impressive. This one has been erased many times; it is a palimpsest of ghosted thoughts and effaced moments. I can no longer tell what the latest layer is. My mind drifts and I let the words flow in my vision.

“…screaming across the stars…”

“Please take this seed. Treasure it, for few of these plants remain. Prepare the soil with…”

“And I didn’t think I could stop, because I have to keep at it. We come back, even in despair and shame, even if it’s not good enough, we come back…”

“Please copy the preceding message exactly into ten bottles. If you are hesitant, please know that I would do the same for you, had you asked it of me. It’s only fair…”

“…ribbit. The little froggy went ribbit. The little froggy went…”

When I find that I am just rereading the same statements over and over, I set this puzzle of chronology aside and take up the next bottle. This one contains a piece of cloth, once perhaps olive drab, but bleached by sun and time into a colorless state. The ink is something dark, perhaps insect gall.

“I stood here too, you know. You know what watching a sunset is like? We’ve watched the same one. We stand together as the world rotates and the light wipes its way around the world. How can we be so similar and not know each other better? If we both have the same thoughts, the same experience, are we not the same person? Cannot we reach even one step beyond, to know each other and speak face to face?

“I feel like I’m dying out here. Faith does not succor me; it merely makes it possible to endure the constancy, the way that all days are the same. If all are the same, why could not they be just one day? Why is my life to be measured out like this, in ticks of the planetary clock? There is so much that could be and which I cannot be…”

I sit a while and measure myself by this letter. I still feel like myself, or rather, I feel like a subset of myself; whatever parts of me are necessary to survive being stranded alone, and no more than this. I am a thing silent and solitary, in a land built for giants. I am a human lacking the protections that humans have built for each other; the comfortable dwelling, fabrics and beds, power and heat and fans, pre-gathered food. I am a small naked thing and I do this because there is nothing else I can reasonably do.

As I dwell on this, the needs of the body impress upon me again. I stand to take a break and refresh myself. I walk to the island’s small stream and slake my thirst, check the bushes for new berries, relieve myself, and finish off a slab of fish I’d cooked a day ago. I confess that I take my time in returning. It is an animal pleasure I now enjoy, not intellectual.

I walk back to the lean-to, passing by more bottles that have washed ashore. But I touch none of them; my work is already arranged for me. Some bottles may wash away again if I do not reach them soon enough, but such is the way things go. There are always more.

A brown bottle yields a cheap thumb drive. It has the word “Hi!” scratched into it by blue ballpoint. I chuckle and set it aside; I have no way to read its contents, but I give the author points for creativity.

The next bottle once held seltzer, and it has a smell inside of artificial berry.

“This is a story about a whale. A happy whale with a tall spout, who met a very special little girl…”

Knowing humanity’s true relation with whales, I cannot get far into this piece, and so I set it aside.

The next bottle is full of ash. I give a grim chuckle and pour it away. I’ve seen the variations: sand and leaves, and i swear that once someone sent me some actual horseshit. I myself have, on a lark, just screamed into an empty bottle before sealing it and sending it out into the relentless waves.

The next one is a marvel. Someone took the trouble to scratch their letters on the inside of the transparent plastic bottle. What a clever way to save limited writing material! The medium is the message. Sadly, while the text is legible enough, it is too cryptic for me to readily decipher, and so I set it aside for later reading. The pile saved “for later” constantly grows, and I never have time to do more than glance at it.

And so the day goes as the shadows stretch from the trees across the sands. I open my bottles and read them. I read of odd cosmologies, experiments in philosophy, reports of odd sea life, entreaties for aid, false reports of escape. Sometimes I cheer, sometimes I burn with rage, and once I bow my head and weep. Every once in a while I cast my eyes up to the rushing waves and the bright points of light from the bobbing specks that approach me. Save our souls, save our sanity, save something.

As the end of the day approaches, I stand up and stretch my back. The sunset takes up half the sky in glorious colors of fiery red and orange, highlighting the clouds in fierce lines and making them cast dark shadows in streaks across the sky. A soul inspiring spectacle that I have seen hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of times. I have not grown indifferent to it, but… I have grown. Like the message writer who complained of redundant time, I have so many moments that have all become the same.

I sigh, then bend to the stacks of messages. The plastic labels can be scrubbed for reuse (though who has time to write, for all the reading to do?) The cloth has value, and some of the paper can be reclaimed. I set aside a few choice pieces, and bundle the rest.

I take up the stacks of leaves and worn paper and cardboard, and carry them down the beach to the black ring of stones. I had gotten a good pile of branches and logs together yesterday, and left them out to dry after last week’s storm. I stuff the papers and leaves among the logs, and start rubbing at my firestick, for the beacon must be kept lit. No matter what the cost. No matter how often I must try. No matter how thick the callus on my palms or dense the weariness in me. The tinder catches and I blow it to smoking, flickering life, and watch as it creeps into the leaves and papers and etches each one with a curving line of flame, a script of incandescence writing a message borne of physical law.

I take up another piece of paper and scrape it clean. My fingers tighten around the stub of my burnt stick, and as the burning letters illuminate the page I scrawl, ignoring the pain in my fingers and the cramp in my neck. I feel good about this one. It may be the one that saves me, or redeems all my efforts.

The beacon must stay lit. Someone must eventually see it. I must stay warm.