0387

[eidolon]

The day we graduated from paradise should have been the happiest day of our lives.

They bid us our smiles and gave no time to take in the moment's flash. It blindsided me with a spark of recollect, and within that pure, unsullied blank space of white, the faces we'd set adrift soaked into its canvas. I saw a pink rose, the prettiest I'd ever laid eyes on and will never again. Bleeding cardinals, pale chrysanthemums, gloomy irises... They say the most beautiful of them go first. All of us were reaching for the warmth of the sun. Faded with the shutters of the evening afterglow, our silhouettes merged with the shadows of our room, our next day promised to us and signed not in numbers, but new names.

And I resolved myself to a promise, too:

on the other side, across the sea, I will wait for them to come back to me.

Then, I will carry them, and through my eyes, the world they will see.