Where Your Shadow Learned To Say Goodbye

I felt your shadow lift from the wall before your body moved and knew the room would never hold us the same way again. The candle flame bent toward the door as if following you and when it straightened I understood that whatever had kept you here had already begun to loosen.

The room smelled of salt and old wood soaked with years of tide. Outside the lighthouse the sea breathed in long patient pulls and released itself against the rocks below. Wind threaded through the cracks and carried a low hollow sound that felt like listening. I stood with my back to the wall watching the place where your shadow had rested grow bare and colder by degrees.

By the time you spoke my name it was already clear that this was not a moment that could be argued with. Loving you had always carried a quiet warning and now the warning had decided to be heard. I answered without turning and felt the weight of the answer settle into me like wet cloth.

The lighthouse stood on a narrow spit of land where the sea met itself from different directions. During the day it looked sturdy and ordinary. At night it learned another language. Light circled the dark with a slow relentless patience and the wind taught the walls how to remember sound. I had taken the job because solitude felt safer than possibility. I had not expected the building to offer me anything else.

You appeared to me first as absence. A corner of the room where sound thinned. A place where the light hesitated before moving on. When I noticed you fully you were standing near the stairs fingers resting on the rail as if testing whether it would hold. You looked surprised to be seen and then relieved.

You asked if the light ever slept. Your voice felt close to the skin of things and carried the faint taste of salt. I told you it only pretended. You smiled and said that made sense. When I asked who you were you glanced toward the sea and said you belonged to the interval between flashes. I laughed because it sounded like a metaphor and you watched me with careful eyes.

We learned each other slowly in the narrow rooms and along the spiral stair. You moved easily where the light fell and faded slightly in the darker turns. I noticed how your outline sharpened when the beam swept past and softened when it moved on. You touched objects cautiously. Metal rang softer beneath your fingers. Glass cooled without shattering.

At night we stood together on the platform and watched the beam cut through fog. The sea answered with distant motion and the wind pressed insistently against us. You told me stories that were more feeling than fact. Of waiting and counting and learning to exist in repetition. I listened and felt something in me shift as if recognizing a rhythm I had been following without knowing it.

The first time I reached for you it was instinct not plan. My hand moved through the space beside yours and met resistance like a held breath. Warmth spread slowly and then steadied. You looked at our hands with something like wonder and fear. After a moment you pulled away and the cold rushed back leaving a quiet ache.

After that we kept our distance more carefully. We spoke more softly and stood farther apart. Still the lighthouse noticed. The light lingered when you were near and the beam seemed brighter as if pleased with itself. I began to feel the hours blur. Day and night lost some of their authority. Sleep came shallow and vivid and I woke with the sound of the sea already inside me.

The cost arrived quietly. My reflection in the glass sometimes showed a delay as if deciding whether to follow. Food tasted faint and conversation with the mainland grew strained. When I walked along the rocks my footing felt uncertain like the ground was less convinced of me. You watched with concern and said nothing. Silence grew between us like a held truth.

One evening a heavy fog rolled in and swallowed the beam. The lighthouse filled with a deeper darkness and the sound of the sea grew closer and louder. You stood beside me solid and present in a way I had not felt before. The air hummed with tension and the light strained against the fog as if learning frustration.

You told me then that the lighthouse was not only a place. It was a promise. It kept ships from loss and kept you bound to the act of keeping. Being near me had begun to change that binding. You said that love carried weight and shadows learned new shapes when they were held too closely.

I wanted to say that we could choose otherwise. That promises could be remade. Instead I listened and felt the truth of your words settle slowly and painfully. I realized that I had been growing lighter in ways that frightened me. Loving you was asking me to drift.

In the days that followed we lingered at the edges of each other. You arrived later and left earlier. The beam found you less often and when it did your outline shimmered as if undecided. I learned the ache of missing you before you were gone. Each night felt like rehearsal.

The final night came clear and cold. Stars cut sharply through the sky and the sea lay dark and watchful. The beam moved cleanly across the water and returned again and again. You stood in the room below the lantern where the walls curved inward and the light pressed close.

We spoke slowly choosing words that could bear weight. You told me that staying would anchor you too deeply and pull me with you into something neither of us could leave. You said that leaving now would hurt less than waiting until the lighthouse forgot the difference between us and its own keeping. I believed you because my bones already felt lighter.

When I answered my voice shook only once. I told you that I would not ask you to stay if staying meant losing what you were meant to guard. The silence that followed felt full and merciful. You stepped closer and this time when you touched my face the warmth held and spread like a final blessing.

Your shadow fell across the wall again briefly and I watched it with a tenderness that hurt. When you turned toward the stairs the light caught you and then did not. The room felt suddenly wider and colder. The beam continued its work indifferent and faithful.

Morning came pale and sharp. The fog lifted and the sea revealed itself unchanged. I climbed the stairs and tended the light with steady hands. The lighthouse answered and the beam cut clean through air that no longer held you.

Sometimes at dusk when the light shifts just so I see a shadow pause where yours once rested. It never stays. I let it go and keep the light moving carrying forward what was given and what could not be kept.