Across the Divide

 

In a city scarred by conflict, Daniel’s voice was a lifeline. A journalist stationed in a war-torn country, his camera and pen bore witness to truths the world could not ignore. Back home in South Africa, his wife Marlene clung to each message he managed to send—fragments of their love stitched through unstable connections.

Then the world changed again.

COVID swept through borders like wildfire, grounding flights and severing exit routes. The planes—aging, overworked—were deemed unsafe. Airlines were ordered to halt international travel. Daniel was now stranded, not by choice, but by circumstance.

Each day, Marlene watched the news, praying that the distant echoes of gunfire didn’t silence the man she loved. And he, trapped between duty and longing, whispered into his recorder every night: “My love for you is constant and unfaltering, regardless of how far apart we are.”

Their story became one of endurance—of letters folded into memory, of dreams suspended in time. And through every lockdown, every delay, and every headline, one truth remained: love, though divided by oceans and fate, refused to be grounded.

Marlene sat by the open window, the West Coast wind brushing her face like a gentle whisper. The house felt quieter these days. Not empty, just missing its rhythm—the one that Daniel’s voice always brought. Every morning, she brewed coffee for two out of habit, sipping hers slowly and leaving his to cool untouched.

She kept his last message saved on her phone. “My love for you is constant and unfaltering, regardless of how far apart we are.” He had recorded it after another sleepless night reporting from the rubble-strewn outskirts of a city she could barely pronounce.

Now, with COVID grounding the world and war anchoring him to danger, her heart lived in a strange duality: pride for his bravery, and ache for his absence. Flights were suspended, airlines warned of aging aircraft, and no promises were made about when borders would open.

But Marlene refused to let despair win. Every night, she wrote to him in a leather-bound journal, entries he might never read.

“Daniel, I miss your shadow in the hallway, your shoes kicked off at the door, your laugh when I burned the toast and pretended it was gourmet. I miss being the soft place where your hard day lands.”

She spent her days volunteering, cooking for neighbours, helping her grandchildren with schoolwork—anything to keep her world spinning. But every quiet moment bent toward one prayer: bring him home.

In her garden, she planted sunflowers, one for each month he’d been gone. Bright defiant blooms, facing the sun like her own stubborn hope.

And sometimes, when the wind rustled through the leaves just so, she imagined his voice traveling across continents, across chaos, whispering, “Soon.”