Until next time.

A crackle; an interruption; darkness. An hour behind already and another is lost—even the cell tower is down. Down down down. Searching out eyes and smiles and touches by lazily flickering candlelight, skin tones warmed and smoothed. Waving a hand back and forth over the flame, close enough for a cool metal band to trap heat and sear skin in turn. Another arrow pointing north—the second on a day-old grid—instead of an X. X marks the spot, and these days don’t match the one two leaves ahead.

Running faster and faster, feeling like a bullet train sucker-punching the atmosphere and outsmarting the clouds. It can’t always be this endless, can it? Being physically young yet having an old soul, worn down with an eidetic flash of one last, watery smile disappearing through frosted doors, a vision burning behind membrane and capillary?

All of it goes both ways, and that is the only shining beacon—there are only so many who can understand the taped-up nutshell desperately clawing to hold itself together.

One leaves; one is behind. Turn, repeat the opposite. Drift through the ocean of interim in the azure before wheels touch back down and the world once more begins operating on an axis tilted toward the east. Harsh words rush to overtake a love with the power to break and consume like powder and fire at the meeting point. A connection cut but not severed, though the final thread frays.

And then, a book. A capital-B Book. Wrapped in brown paper, a letter and a photograph concealed within—a secret, for no one else. Something sacred has been created, and suddenly it’s a remembrance. A universe, a planet, a country, a state, a building, a staircase, a brush of fingertips. A future traced back to the very beginning in a single moment, the brightest in ten months. It’s an affirmation wrapped in brand new leather and age-old love.

Two leaves left. The weight of waiting. Being untethered for so long, the oak tree having uprooted itself. The clocks have melted and slipped like a Dali painting but now the six is where the three should be and continuing to turn in the right direction. The beacon burns fiercely with a new injection, and suddenly oxygen feels richer, more plentiful. The setting sun decides to rise again with no notion of a long dark ahead. It’s easier to smile. Jogging to savor instead of running to forget. Surety and confirmation and promise all bound up with vellum and thread.

All it takes is one second, and then there’s a lifetime swimming into focus. Close enough to smell, to hear, to taste, to see. Crack open, and the last sense will follow.

The nutshell breaks—one clean split down the middle—and there’s a tower. Tarmac. A terminal. And finally, a touch. A brush of fingertips while looking at an antique pocket watch. The knight rises; the oak tree anchors. And then?

Life. Love. Everything.