Remember

There once was a boy who loved a girl very much, and she in turn loved him. They were young, and they were happy, because they did not know any different.

The boy grew older, as boys do, and decided to follow his dreams to the city, where he could hear them calling. He promised the girl he would not forget her, and she likewise.

He went to the city, and every evening he looked to the north, imagining that the girl was looking south, that somehow, some way, across the miles between them, their eyes were meeting, that she had not forgotten him. And, indeed, there were many nights when she was looking south, towards the city, at that very time, and thinking of the boy, whom she loved so much. "Remember," the sun whispered to them as it set, and they did.

Time passed, as it does, and the boy stayed in the city. The boy and girl did not forget each other, but distance has a way with memory, not to weaken but to strengthen, to calcify it, set it in stone, cold and unliving. And love cannot be blamed for weakening in those circumstances, for love requires heat, is nothing if not the distillation of life. The girl did not stop loving the boy, but her love for him stayed still, like her memory of him, and other loves went rushing by. One day, one of these loves asked her to be his wife, and she said yes, for she loved him. But she had not forgotten the boy. She looked south, hoping he would hear and forgive her, that he had not forgotten her.

And he had not.

The boy looked up and to the north, with that feeling we all have at times, of unexplainable unsettlement. Things were changing, he knew, they were always changing; such was their way. But memory is constant, memory does not change, memory is all the little details of people set in stone, waiting just a step behind for us to turn and see them once more. He still remembered the girl, as he had promised he would, and he closed his eyes and smiled as the sun sank below the horizon.