I don’t know where you are.

“I am here with you.”

Was that you?

Or is it just your voice inside my head?

Or something else?

“I am here with you.”

“Are you?”

My words echo down the lonely shadowed hallway.  Its once bright golden walls relished the warm light of the sun so much, they refused to let it go, but now they’re muted and dark, as if a storm is imminent.

There’s no movement in here.  It mirrors the stillness of my body.  I am sat on the carpeted floor with my back to the door of my office.  I stretch up carefully against the solid wood, but there’s no ache, no pain.

Where are you?

“I am here with you.”

“Stop saying that,” I reply.  “You’re not.”

“How do you know?”

“I can’t see you.”

“That does not mean I am not here.”

I can’t feel your presence.  I don’t know where your words are coming from.

How did I come to be here on the floor?

I remember completing my shift of watchroom duties, ready to welcome the changeover period.  I always look forward to your coming, with a cup of tea and a smile.  It’s always the simplest acts of love that make me smile.

Was I making coffee for you?  The air does not smell of it.

And why is it so quiet?

Even on the calmest of days I can hear the gulls crying to Poseidon; bring fish to the surface so our families may live another cycle of the tide.  But not today.  I should be able to hear the wind around our Lighthouse, even if it’s just a whispered sigh, but I can’t.

Nor can I hear the deep tick-tocking of our Grandfather clock.  I look up from the floor at his gilded face, staring down at me from the dark mahogany casing, his clock-hands frozen and metrical voice silent.

He cannot have stopped.  He has never stopped in over a hundred years of faithful winding by our predecessors.  And you would never leave him so neglected.  Just as you promised you would never leave me.

“And so I haven’t.”

“Then where are you?”

“I can show you if you let me.”

“What does that mean?”

“Which part of ‘I can show you if you let me’ is confusing you?”

“All of it.  Now tell me what you mean.”

“Exactly what I just said.  Now shush your mush, close your eyes, and let me lead you.”

I smile.  That sounds more like you.

I close my eyes, breathing in long and slow, then out as I settle myself down.  I feel a strong pull from my heart and, eyes still closed, I follow it to standing.  I pause for a moment with my bare feet on the carpeted floor.

Something is wrong.  I usually enjoy the feel of carpet beneath my toes, but I can’t feel it at all.  I squeeze my toes into the soft pile, recalling a memory of how it used to feel, and a little of that sensation returns.

Something else, too.  I did not creak like a rusted door hinge when I got up from the floor.  I did not have to straighten my spine out like the slow progress of evolutionary man; from hunched-over ape to fully standing human.

It’s been many years since I was able to move without at least some discomfort or stiffness, and now my joints feel as if they are young and new again.  Better, even, because they feel nothing at all.

I keep my eyes closed and begin to walk slowly through our home, finding my way as if I can perceive the walls and furniture around me.  I wonder if blind people develop their senses, so they can detect objects.

Or does the furniture come alive when our eyes close?  Sometimes it just seems to jump in and out of the way, depending on its mood.  Sometimes even when are eyes are open too.

“You always did have the most random thoughts.”

I can hear you smiling when you say that, you know.

“How is that random?” I ask the stale air.  “I was following my train of thought.”

“Final destination, malicious furniture with a penchant for jumping.”

You’re hilarious.

“I know.”

I find my way to the bottom of the stairs, where soft carpet gives way to cool stone, and I stop.  I don’t want to go any further.  I don’t want to go up there and see what’s at the top, but I don’t know why.

I open my eyes and look up the spiral stone staircase.  There is nothing to see except worn steps indented from many years of service, and a smooth-worn handrail of solid wood.

But nothing to hear.

It troubles me greatly that there is nothing to hear.  At the very least there should be a soft whistle of wind as it sneaks in beside the long thin windows.  I put a hand up close to the window’s edge to touch the breeze sneaking in, but there is nothing.

No air dancing on my fingertips, and no seaweed scent of the sea.

I try to look out the thin window, but there is only black.  No reflection of my face pressed against it, and nothing outside.  Just black.  I should be able to see the lighthouse beam as it arcs around.  I wait a little longer for its elegant light to sweep the perimeter, but it’s not there.

And neither are you.

I still don’t know where you are.

“I’m waiting for you.”

That’s creepy.

It sounds like you’re hiding at the top of the stairs with a shovel at the ready, waiting to cave my head in; ‘I’m waiting for you.’

“And how can you be waiting for me?” I ask the stuffy air, “If you’re already here with me?”

“Thank you, Mrs Logic.  You never could take something on faith.  Always had to see the proof of it, before you believed.”

“I believed.”

“Not all the time.”

“My belief grew over time.”

“Once you had proof.  And even then, it was never a certainty.”

“Well excuse me for having doubts.  We can’t all be as certain as you when it comes to matters of the heart.”

“Your heart was never the problem.  Overthinking it was.”

“So I should’ve just stopped thinking, that’s what you’re saying?”

“Stop putting words in my mouth, you know that’s not what I mean.”

I purse my lips and begin stomping up the stairs, bare feet smacking the warm smooth stone.

“Well if you’re going to batter me round the head with a shovel,” I say.  “Here I come.”

“I’m not going to batter you with a shovel,” you say, with a patience for me I have never really understood.  “Despite you pushing my buttons.”

A smile comes to my face as I continue up the steps.  I am enjoying the feel of my legs working in harmony with my body.  I’d forgotten how it feels.

“And as the Art of War guy says, ‘If someone pushes your buttons, change the combination.’”

“That’s not what he said.”

“That’s how I interpret it.”

“You always did have a tenuous grasp on historical accuracy.”

“Maybe I’m coming up these stairs to batter you, Mr Smarty-Pants.”

“That’s Professor Smarty-Pants, if you don’t mind.”

My smile widens as I reach the top, turning the corner to see a fully lit, open watchroom before me.  This part of our Lighthouse is all windows, with far-reaching views of the coast on calm days, or a close-up look at the raging seas that crash against rock and Lighthouse alike on stormier ones, but all I can see is total blackness.  And no reflections.  As if the glass has been covered, inside and out.

For hundreds of years this has been a Lighthouse, guiding Lightships and saving lives from a painful death by drowning, although at the moment there is no light to steer any lost souls to safety.  It is only during the last couple of centuries it has been transformed into –

I stop.  I cannot go any further.  I am staring at your chair.

You are there, but you are not there.

It’s just your body.

“How do you know I’m not there?”

I move towards you without wanting to.  Your skin is so pale, tinged with blue, and I know your body is cold without having to touch it.  I do not want to touch it.  And yet my hands are reaching out to you.  For you.

Except it’s not you.

It’s your body, but it’s not you.

“How do you know?”

You aren’t there to fill that body with life, with love, with your warm smile to greet me as you stand and come towards me, as you put your arms around me and your hot breath awakens my skin.

Besides, your voice is coming from inside my head, not this empty vessel before me.  I come closer and feel the tears start, blurring my vision before I brush them aside.  There is a growing ache in my limbs that wasn’t there before.

I stop beside you and look down.  You were sitting when it happened, with your head laid down upon your arms like a pillow, as if you had travelled to the land of perfect sleep with no return.

“I am here with you.”

I shake my head in reply.  The stiffness is slowing me down now, so I grab the edge of the desk to help me kneel down beside you.  I look closer at your face and see the contours I have traced with my fingers so many times.  Still they draw me to look upon them as if I am seeing you for the first time.

You look so peaceful in your constant sleep, no smiling wrinkles on your face that you always had too few of.  I cannot see your eyes with their lids closed in breathless sleep.  I love your eyes; they would look at me as if I were the greatest miracle to occur on this, or any other planet.

“You were.”

I smile and reach out a hand to touch your face.

“So were you.”

I have barely touched your cold smooth skin, when I am yanked backwards; a fast reversal of the journey I just took.  Watchroom, stone stairs, carpeted hallway floor.  Once more I am aware of the hard wooden door against my back.  Did I move?  Did I see and feel you upstairs in the watchroom?  Was that real?

Is this?

“Am I dreaming?” I ask the air.  It is harder to breathe now; I can feel it lodging heavy on my chest.  “Because if I am, I would really like to wake up.”

“You’re not dreaming.”

“Then what the hell is going on?”

“How much do you remember?”

“About what?  What is it that I’m meant to be remembering?”

I look up at the Grandfather clock, as if the answers will be written on his face, but all he says is ‘It is twenty-five-to-twelve’.  Which is odd, because I’m sure only a few minutes ago he said, ‘It is ten-past-eleven’, yet he is still frozen in time.

I stare up at him, and it finally comes to me.

Time is out of joint.

Something has caused this.

Was it me?

“Why – ”

Is that what happened to you?  Did I batter you with a shovel?  I didn’t see one upstairs.  I know our arguments get heated sometimes, but to do that?

“Why do you always have to – ”

“Did I …?  Could I …?”  But I cannot form the question in my thoughts, let alone speak them.

And then I hear laughter inside my head.  Coming from you.  You are laughing at me.

Not in a creepy ‘I’m coming to haunt you for all eternity because you battered me with a shovel’ kind of way, but the laugh I remember from when you were alive.  A laugh so wild, so free, so deeply musical, I always loved to hear it.

But not in this moment.  In this moment you’re not laughing with me, you’re laughing at me, and right now your laughter is really starting to piss me off.

“When you’ve quite finished,” I say.

Your laughter trails off from wherever you are.  You could be a thousand miles away, or on the other side of this door.  All I know is I can hear it inside my head which, for all I know, has finally lost the plot completely.

“Why do you always have to assume it’s your fault, or it’s a problem with your head?  How could you ever think you were responsible for my death?”

“It was a logical conclusion,” I say.  “Apparently, shovels and head-battering were on my mind, and I thought that maybe …”

“No.  That’s not you.  That was never you.”

Your voice is so warm, even without your breath to carry it on.

“You were never capable of something like that.  It’s absurd.”

I sigh and lean back against the door, feeling the warmth only solid wood can have, but its comfort is hard and unyielding.  It is not malleable as you once were, it cannot grow arms and hold me as you once did.

The tears return, touching my grief, and I let them.

You will never hold me close and surround me with strong arms.  Never stroke my hair and ease my doubtful thoughts into peaceful submission.  Never place a hand at the back of my neck to make me feel safe in this dangerous and unjust world.

“It’s not fair,” I say to the thick cloying air of our house, our home, and your final resting place.  I feel the rage swelling up within me; bitter rage at the universe for giving you to me, and hopeless anger for taking you away again.

“IT’S NOT FAIR!”

I breathe with a greater effort now, as if I’m eating the dense air.  The pain has returned to my joints and to everywhere else too, it seems, worse than before, so any movement I make will hurt deeper.

I feel my emotions grow colder, grow darker, like a heavy storm-cloud blackening before it bursts into uncontrollable rain on the boiling sea.  I allow the swell of emotion to rise up within me, then crash and split apart on the unyielding rocks.

Once it is has lost its force, my rage at the universe subsides as fast as it rose, leaving an empty shell within my chest.  I let go into the grief, my body shaking with the helpless injustice of it.  You were too young, I should have been the one to go first. 

I turn to the side, ignoring my body’s scream at the movement, and pull my knees up to my chest.  I rest my cheek on the smooth wooden door, pressing against its solid shape for comfort.  I stroke the wood with soft wet fingertips and imagine it curving around me, like an early morning duvet cocooning me with its warmth.

If this were my coffin, nothing would get in.

It would hold me forever.

 “It’s not enough,” I say.

“It never is.”

 “Why did you leave me?”

“I’m still here.”

“No, you’re not!  You’re just a voice in my head.  Like you were before we met.  When I thought I was off my nut because I heard your voice inside my head, telling me you would come for me.  How was I meant to know?”

“Because I came for you.”

“I can’t go back,” I say.  “I can’t go back to the way it was before you came.  Now that I’ve known a life with you.  I just can’t.”

The sadness starts to climb up within me again.

“I know.”

“Do you?” I ask, using the heel of my hand to press the fresh tears from my eyes.  “Do you know what it’s like to find your most beloved one dead?  Do you know what it’s like to never touch their warm body again?”

“Yes I do.”

“Then tell me how to deal with this.”

“Look at the clock.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not changing the subject.  Look at the clock.”

“The clock?  Why?”

“When are you simply going to do as I ask?  Look at the clock.”

“I already did.  It said twenty-five-to-twelve.  Which is bonkers because five minutes earlier it said ten-past-eleven – ”

“Can’t you just do what I ask?  Please just look at the clock.”

I look up at the Grandfather clock again.  The minute hand has shifted without sound or movement, and now stands at five-to-midnight.  How is that possible?  The only way a clock-hand could change so much, without sound or movement, is if –

And then it finally dawns on me.

“Oh no.”

Time is dangerously out of joint.

“Finally.  It’s about bloody time.”

The lack of feeling in my body, the suppressed sounds, the suffocating air, the missing light from outside, and windows with no reflection.

“Oh crap.”

The silence has come.

“Exactly.  Now as much as I would like to argue with you, we don’t have time.”

“Crap.”

The silence took you.  Why didn’t it take me too?

“Now, I need you believe me when I tell you that I am here with you.”

“Okay,” I say, daring the minute hand of the clock to move again while I’m watching it.

“No, I really mean it.  Believe Me.”

“Okay.”

The clock didn’t say ten-past-eleven when I first looked at it.  I was wrong.

“You have to feel me with you, only then can I pull you through this.”

“Okay.”

It was eleven-minutes-past-eleven.  Eleven-eleven.  The doorway.

“Stop saying Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Freya!”

That breaks my gaze on the clock hands.

“Sorry.  I’m here.”

“I need you to close your eyes again, and trust me.”

I glance at the clock once more, and then shut my eyes tight.

I have the strangest sensation of being pulled backwards.  Which shouldn’t be possible, because there’s a wooden door behind me.  Except now it’s pliable, surrounding me like I wanted it to.

I can feel the wood grain around me.  No, not around me.  It feels more like it’s moving through me, going inside my body as I am being pulled from the hallway to the study.  Except it isn’t moving through me, of course, I am moving through it. 

Does the door feel me?  Does it feel my heart and body, like I feel its grains and splinters?

And now I have stopped.  Stuck in the middle of its solid wooden mass.

“Stop fighting this.”

“What happened?”

“You tensed up and stopped me from bringing you through.”

“How?”

“We really don’t have time for your questions and random thoughts right now.”

I frown at your voice; it seems to be less inside my head, and more like it’s coming from behind me.

“There’s no need to get snippy.”

I think I hear a heavy sigh, while my head is surrounded by the door.  Does that mean my mouth is full of tiny wooden spikes that move in and out as I speak?  If I opened my eyes, would I see more grains of wood like the ones stuck in my body?  I might not be able to see at all because they are actually inside my eyes.  Best not, then.

“Can you feel my hands?”

I can feel hands touching my back, I hope they’re yours.

“Yes of course they are.  Focus on my hands, and you will come.”

With a single breath I relax, feeling your large strong hands as you pull me through.  I am lying on the floor of our study, looking up at you as you stand over me.

“I can see you,” I say.

“I can see you, too,” you say with a smile.

You are no longer just a voice in my head, but a face in front of me.  You offer me your hands as you once did and I take them, feeling their cool smoothness in my own.

I pause to ready myself for standing up with the effort of my years, but it is neither hard nor painful.  I stand easily and we look at each other for a moment, then you pull me into your arms and it feels like home.

 “I’ve missed you,” I say.  Your arms feel the same around me, but I cannot smell your scent.

“I wasn’t gone that long.”  Your voice is as it once was, though its resonance is muted like all the sounds in this air-soup that has invaded our Lighthouse.

“Long enough,” I say and draw back to look at your face.  It looks as it once did, though you now have a hint of that same cold blueness I saw upstairs.

“What happened to you?” I ask.

You smile at me with gentle forgiveness, as if I haven’t fully understood yet.  It’s a look I’ve come to know well over the years.  You hold me firmly and turn me to look over your shoulder.

I am there, sitting in my desk-chair.

But I am not really there.

It’s just my body.

It looks like I am asleep on the desk, my head resting on folded arms like a pillow, but of course I’m not.  I stagger a little at the sight of my body and you keep me upright, then pull me tight into your arms again.

“I know,” you say into my ear.  “I know what it’s like to find my most beloved one dead.  I know what it’s like to never be able to touch them again.”

I nod against you.

“And you know that we are touching now, but it isn’t real, don’t you?”

I nod again.  I know.  I know what this means for us.

We are dead.  The silence came for us both.  I draw back from you and stand looking into your eyes.  Once I could see clear down into their depths, but now they hold only a surface reflection, a glimpse of what was.

Our presence will remain here only until the clock strikes twelve.  Then we will either move on to our next life, or remain here to become trapped entities, wandering the earth until someone helps us cross-over.

A replacement shift will come and remove our bodies, then take our places in the watchroom.  Time will turn for them as it has stopped for us.

BONG!

You smile at me and take my hand, intertwining your fingers in mine as we have done so many times before, but for the last time.

BONG!

We move back to my body, lying so peaceful and still, sleeping forever as we hear the clock work to complete its twelve strikes.  It is the only passage of time that cannot be quickened.

BONG!

We kneel down beside my body, and I look up into my face.  It is a cool pale blue, with fewer lines than I would’ve expected.

BONG!

I look at you and ask, “How will I find you again?”

You smile and say, “I will come and find you.”

BONG!

I ask, “Will you do something for me?”

Your hand tightens its grip on mine as you say, “Anything.”

BONG!

“Come and find me a little sooner next time.”

“I promise,” you say.  “But you have to promise to believe me when I come for you.”

BONG!

Your free hand reaches out and gently tilts my head up to meet yours.  You plant a soft kiss on my cheek, then pull back to meet my eyes with a smile.

I smile back, “I promise.”

BONG!

I reach for the side of my pale blue cold face, holding tight to your hand so I do not lose you until I have to.  I touch my dead cheek, just long enough to marvel at its smoothness before I hear

BONG!

I feel a rush as we are pulled away, hands entwined.

I follow you into the darkness.

White light into Summerland.

A forest of green, an ocean of blue.

The pink darkness of separation.

I don’t know where you are.

My hand feels different.

Not the left one holding the wine glass, that one’s perfectly normal, though somewhat chilly and wet.  It’s the other one.  It feels vacant.  I transfer the wine glass to it, but it doesn’t fill the emptiness.

It doesn’t always feel that way.

Sometimes when I’m alone in a crowd, I think I feel fingers entwined with mine, but when I look down they’re not there.  When I walk alone I’ll feel someone beside me, but there’s no-one.  It’s just my imagination creating a fantasy.

I look down at the wine I’ve got left and contemplate another drink, but that means spending more time here to drink it.  I’ve taken a long time with each glass.  Not because I run the risk of getting drunk, the bar staff have been well paid to supply me with fake wine all night long.

I just don’t want to be here.

I shouldn’t feel this way at my own exhibition, but I do.

I had to be here, no choice in it one way or the other.  It took all day just to get the order of my photographs right, and even then I felt compelled to remain, walking slowly around the room in endless circles, checking and re-checking.

I begin another circuit of the room, following the sequence of black and white photographs, glancing over the small tints of carefully placed colour in each one.  Churches, graveyards, and the clock faces I have always been drawn to.

Photography is my obsession, it has been since my first throw-away camera.  Sometimes it feels like it is the only thing I want to do.  Other times it feels like a means to an end. 

Of late, my subject matter has expanded to include Lighthouses; towers that do not have a face to document time, but have a flashing light to measure the rhythm of their hours and centuries.

As I walk along to the end of the sequence, I see two women scrutinising my final photograph; a solitary Lighthouse, on its desolate rock, with dark clouds looming.  I turn my back to them, but it doesn’t stop their words from reaching me.

“She does like to shoot tall pointed objects, must be a certain Freudian influence.”

Then they laugh in that way people do when they think they’re being intelligent or witty at an art exhibition.

“Yes, yes,” the other one agrees.  “That would explain their popularity and why they are so ridiculously overpriced.”

This is their semi-literate way of saying I have a penis-fetish.

Bollocks.  Pun intended.  Perhaps next time I should photograph erect office buildings, shining tall and pink in the early morning sun, complete with two hanging bushes at their base.

These people and their opinions used to interest me, then for a while they annoyed me, now they just don’t matter.  I walk away from the women and their words, their theories and criticisms, and let them float there to be flushed away.

I don’t know what I hate more.  The crap they talk, or the fact that I have to be here to listen to it.  Sober.  I never used to be.  Sober, I mean.  I attended my first exhibition on red wine, and made an exhibition of myself instead.

Fortunately for me, I had friends in attendance who thought it was hilarious, and no-one from the press.  Some of them thought it might even add to my ‘artistic mystique’.  But really, how seriously do you take an artist after you’ve seen their knickers?  Exactly.

As I continued to reveal them to the public – the photos, not my knickers – I came to understand that once displayed, these images no longer belonged to me.  They belonged to whoever sees them and feels an emotional connection with them.

So, they belong to those women now.  You see what you want to see.  Perhaps it’s not me who has the penis-fetish, after all.  For me, their meaning is not that complicated; they’re about the passage of time, and the unseen clock-face always hanging over your head, counting down to the end only it knows.

Plus, obviously, penises.

Kidding.

Well, mostly…

I withdraw from the voices swarming around me until they become white noise and I cannot distinguish their words.  I look over at the make-shift bar, watching the clock above their heads.

If the clock hands could speak, they would say it’s almost five to midnight.  And once they strike the hour, I will take my leave.  Until then, I will linger here, hiding in plain sight from these strangers who think they know me.

What I really want is to be alone with my camera, travelling back to Scotland’s far north, where the wind races unchecked round its Lighthouses, and the sea speaks of its own time and place.

I give the clock-face another glance and think to hell with it, I’ve been here long enough, it’s time for me to move on.  I begin to saunter towards the bar as if I’m getting another drink.

I smile at a few of the attendees as I pass by their blurred faces in the crowd.  I don’t linger, or give them a second glance.  Not an opportunity to talk, just smile and nod.  I will put my glass down on the bar, and head for the exit.

“I am here with you.”

I smile at the familiar sound of his voice in my head.  The man who says he is here, but never is.

“I am coming for you.”

Really?  Again?

For all the times I’ve heard him speak, he has never appeared, not even a glimpse.  Sometimes, for fun, I follow my intuition to see if he will appear where I am drawn to, but he never is.  Some beautiful Lighthouses, though.

“I am here.”

“Of course you are,” I mutter, and immediately regret it as the people near me turn at the sound of my voice.  No bother, they’ll think I’m just a bonkers artist who talks to herself.

And they would be right.  On both counts.

I walk over to the table that has transformed into a pretend bar.  The bar staff and I greet each other as the old friends we have become on this endless journey from morning to night, and I get ready to swallow the last of my fake white wine.

“I am here.”

“Not if you’ve got any sense, you’re not,” I speak into the glass just before I drain the last of it.  I put the wineglass down and make for the door, but my way is blocked by a man.  Normally I would just keep my head down and push past, but something makes me look up.

It is your eyes I see first, so open and welcoming, so clear and so deep, with a hint of mischief around the edge that makes me want to smile.  You look into mine as if this is what you came here for.

“It is.”

Well, that’s just spooky.  That voice is so strong and clear inside my mind.  Same voice.  But you’re here, not just a voice in my head.  How can you be speaking to me like this?  Your lips didn’t move did they?

Is that really you? 

“Of course it is.  When I saw the Lighthouses in your work, I knew it was time.”

Yeah, sure.

“You doubted I would come for you.”

A little.  No, that’s not true, I’ve entertained doubts so immense I’ve taken them to Edinburgh Castle just to fit them in.

“That’s funny.”

Almost.

You’re smiling at me as if you really heard me, so once again my doubt begins to knock for attention.

“It’s okay,” you say.  “I will persuade you.  It is always my pleasure to persuade you.”

I want to believe you.  I do.  But I’m starting to feel very aware of the fact that I’m standing here opposite a man I haven’t spoken a word to yet.

“Then let me hold you, and all else will pass us by.”

I stare into your face, and you look at me like you’ve always known me.  You come towards me with your arms already beginning to open and I step into them, meeting you where we come together.

We fit as one.  I breath in to you, and we breathe out together.  Your hand reaches up and gently tilts my head to regard yours.  You plant a soft kiss on my cheek, then pull back and meet me with a smile.

I see visions.

Another lighthouse.  So beautiful.  On an island.  With strong wind and loud seagulls.

“Are they just visions?”

Maybe not.  I think they might be memories.  Or even the future.  I shake a little, but you hold me close.  My face turns in towards your neck.  Your warmth is a smell I didn’t know I was missing until now.  It smells like home.

“I’ve missed you.”  Your voice is soft in my ear as you hold me.  I know your voice.  I’ve heard it so often in my head.  It sounds different now.  It feels different, carried on warm breath.

“I’ve missed you, too,” I whisper back.  And I have.  I just didn’t know it till now.

I feel your arms relax and drop, but before I can miss them too much, you have taken my hand.  Our fingers intertwine naturally, fitting together, and I know this is the answer to the emptiness of my hand.

And now I know where you are.

“Let’s go home.”