Can we ever escape our past or are we forever tied with an invisible umbilical to lost moments? Experiencing melancholy for a half remembered idyll of youth, pulled between the desires to somehow recapture those days, to return home. Or do we stay, rooted in our ancestral pastures regretting all the things we were too timid to try...?

The Lighthouse (34 pages), a chapbook, by Jeremy Schliewe, explores these themes of loss and longing.

The unnamed narrator is suddenly called. His brother, Charlie has been arrested trying to break into a lighthouse, which sits on a lake near their childhood home. The narrator goes home assuming that Charlie just needs bail money.

Returning, he discovers that Charlie is being drawn to the lighthouse. The brothers reconnect, but Charlie is not the child he once was, nor is the narrator. For Charlie the lighthouse is the symbol of everything he has lost, his youth, and the growing distance between the brothers, which time has exacerbated.

In the end Charlie has to decide whether he can go back and the narrator has to decide whether he will follow.

This is a sad, quite, tale poignantly written, but written well. It’s the sort of short story which will linger in your mind for some time.

7

Charles Packer