You go, catching wind in your hands before it reaches me where I stand and watch you depart. A single summer gust in the midst of a sweltering day, dissipated but for the whispers of the clocks moving too fast for time that seems to pass so slowly, meets me and my tears that hesitate to leave the safety of my eyes, welling and blurring my last image of you. And with that, you turn the corner and disappear from view, and I reach out for something, anything, to break my fall, for fall I do, the palm of my hand scraping futilely against the plaster of the wall, cool and unforgiving to the touch. It is my reality, that I knew you would leave, that you would not stay by my side forever, and it hits me harder than I could have imagined, having lived and breathed you for an ephemeral, eternal summer. Drops land on the linoleum that I know so well, having spent afternoon upon afternoon wandering about, looking for nothing in particular, and seeing no one but you. And you’re still all that I can imagine seeing, everything that I can say I know, even when I raise the back of my hand to stifle the incessant flow from my eyes, silent in its magnitude. I open my eyes, have to pry them open, and look down the hallway where I saw you last, but it is empty; you have left. I wonder, briefly, vaguely, achingly, if this is how life is going to be now, memories of us with only the haunting shadow of you coloring my world, meaningless in your departure. But time slows for no one, and I cannot wait here for you to turn around and retrieve the silent feelings that are still clutched in my fingers. I will not wait. Perhaps if I, like you, catch the breeze on my way out, tracing your path with my feet, and look up at the brilliant summer sky that made us who we became this season, maybe an atypical breeze will take the remnants of my summer love from my hand and let it dance, finding its way to you, wherever you go.