Turning of the Tides

Tears form but refuse to fall. They reject the path set before them, refusing to betray her. A hole, raw around the edges. Empty now, throbbing. She feels like she's slipping down below, an iron hand clamped over her mouth. No air. She begs for it to come back, like some lost lover. Come back. Don't leave her, she's afraid she'll survive. Afraid she'll live on with this apathy, this dull ache. Dreams pill up before her feet, like rocks on the coast that is so far away. They mock her. Hope eludes her, whispering only on those nights when she can't sleep. Only at night when the tears are no longer afraid, free to course down the curves of her face. Weak, broken. Oddly intact. It's worse that being destroyed, this living. How to fix it? How to get it back, that which continues to hide from her. No doubt it's moved on to someone else, some other soul ignorant of the void it will leave behind with it's inevitable departure. Fools. It never stays, always leaves. Leaves just when you need it most. Just when you feel safe. Safe. A stupid word.
The night is dark, light by some idle street lamp. Warm light on a cold night. She feels it again, that sharp stab of knowing. Knowing that she will be forced to move on. Forced to forget. Doomed by her mortality. The weakness of her memory. It will fade, the cause of what used to be. But she won't ever get it back. No, they're both gone, lingering just beyond her grasp. Does she want it back, if it must come at the cost of forgetting?
Words fill her ears, swimming around her softly. Music that tells her story, but the ending is wrong. All wrong. Not this. Not with so much time left. It was never to be this way. But who is she to say? The end, the path of her story...they are reveled only after the story has ended.
The light continues to shine, ever present. Always a light, on some distant shore. But not hers. Someone else's. Her light sputters, fights. She knows, but she doesn't want to.
She doesn't want to forget.