Message in a Bottle

Response to a Writer's Island prompt from a couple of weeks ago.

The Message
After 91 days and
93 nights he was forced
to admit that there was
no message in the bottle,
just the metallic buzz
of a disconnected phone
and the whispered hum
of the world going by
without him.

So he put out the
empties and filled
the dishwasher with
what was now left of
the good crystal he had
inherited from his
grandmother.

When he went outside
that afternoon he found
there were messages
all around him, inscribed
in the bark of the Pohutakawa
trees and broadcast from
the mouths of the old
couples holding hands
as they walked through
the Domain.

For days after his
release from self-exile
he felt as though he
had suddenly been given
the gift of sight, miraculously
woken with the ability to
speak a foreign language.