  Exile I didn't think to ask him his name but I know that I will never forget the look upon his face as we said "goodbye". He seemed like such a lonely man after he had told me his story and he walked away as he had appeared: a wounded man. His heart had stopped in mid-motion and it seemed nearly lifeless and yet, he lived. He had no way of knowing that love had just slipped out of his life once more. It simply took one step and then another and then, was gone beyond his reach. He let it go and never thought to ask for him to stay just a little longer.
He had spent years, he said, adoring and loving the other side of his life. His friend. His partner. His lover. His equal. In the blink of an eye, the words crashed against his armor of protection and he was shaken to his core by what he could not contain inside.
All those things, those littlest of things, he wished he had said and done were swept away in a single moment of departure. Stolen almost without a care for what and who would be left behind this time. Believing it would simply fade in time only to realize that time never forgets and it never ends. It would come with the graying of his life that he knew what he had lost. He would know how it came to pass but as to "why", well, that would forever elude him. Even now, when it rains, this lonely and wounded man remembers and when the dream has ended and the rain has stopped, the last of his tears sing him to sleep once more.
The reflection of him cherishing another is his self-made prison from which there is no escape because there is no single key to unlock his pride-filled heart. Countless nights when passion was shared has long since grown cold and remorseful. The endless whispering that teased the edges of sleep and a waking moment just prior to dawn are echoes heard no more. A tomorrow that never seemed essential and never came to stay for long is all he has now. Unlike the man he loved, this passing of joy lingers on elsewhere and farther away than the eye can see or the delicate hand of a quiet man could ever dare to imagine as being touched again. A constant reminder that the past refuses to allow itself to be buried in the distance because there it would be forgotten or absolved.
Oh how he longs to feel his touch once more. The infinite desire to hear his name being called. The haunting hope that they will meet one last time before the end of all things between. The lonely man records those minutes, hours, days and weeks of having been apart. It is his natural way of accepting that time is measured in numbers and afterthoughts and so, time holds onto his heart a little tighter with each passing minute, hour, day and week. A heavy heart that must be carried inside a lonely man who only wished once upon a time to find again the romance and laughter of the one he fell in love with so long ago.
I watched him walk silently away at the end. He seemed different than when I first had met him. He looked happier maybe. It was merely an illusion I told myself. There was something burning deep inside that I alone could not rediscover. It was a sentiment that I, too, once labored long to savor and then, it was gone from me.
Much like the day when I met the Lonely Man.... G.~ 
