farewells.

I looked behind me one last time.

It's not like the cello, the thought came in a moment, not like the way your fingers learn to mold themselves to invisible curves and crevices that your mind maps into notes you're searching for, joined together, released like a linen banner by the steady back-and-forth of your trembling bow. How the melody in your head flows in synapses that lift and let fall the tendons in your arm and wrist and hand. Free to flutter and fade with the fog of your November breath, lingering in an empty chamber full of promises for the future. No, it's not like that at all.

It's like digging a pit and watching as time turns its walls to stone.

I found him, finally. He stood still, while the steam and scream of the billowing locomotive stack swallowed first the world behind him, his silhouette stark against the twisting eddies of cloud whites and the churning grays of formless shuffling shapes. I imagined I could see his eyes - blue and narrowed, mirroring mine in their uneasy mix of resignation and intensity - but by then they were dark specks, shrinking by the moment, until he vanished completely, joining the current of unintelligible movements replacing a world I was leaving behind.