There’s nothing he can do to stop it. The seconds turn into minutes, which turn into hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Years.
Her face is only a memory now. He tries to remember the sound of her voice, the smell of her hair, the texture of her skin.
All of it has faded, and keeps fading, like the ink of her letters.
He had meant to return. He had promised to go back for her.
But time is cruel. It passes. It flows, like a river, and there is no going back. Not for him. Not for her.
“It’s not the leaving of Liverpool that grieves me,” he sings, his voice cracking as he tries to remember, “Oh my darling when I think of thee.”
© Kari Fay