If I Fade

I started fading today.

          It started in the corners, then ran up along my edges. A fading of my colors. A muffling of my sound.

          If you were to turn this way, glance my direction for even an instant, you might bring me back. Might return me once again to all my sound and color and glory.

          But you won’t. I know that. And that’s okay. I want you to know that it’s okay if I fade.

          It was one of the last nights of summer. The night you made me. You were out on the lake in that old yellow kayak, the water smooth as a sheet of glass. You stuck your hand in the lake and let it trail through the water, felt time pass through your fingers. A loon called from the other side of the lake, and you looked up, squinted in those last golden rays of sunlight, and felt a tingle run down your spine as you listened to that haunting call.

          And that’s when you made me. That was the moment I was born.

          You used to visit me all the time. I was your favorite memory, I think. You’d think of me, and I’d know that for just an instant, just a single golden moment, I could bring you back to that lake and warm your face in that afternoon sun from long ago.

          I don’t know when you stopped visiting me. It seemed one day you were suddenly far away, across an ocean of other memories, all bristling with disappointment and reeking of regret. I tried to catch your eye across that ocean, to beckon you under the edges of my canvas and warm your face once again.

          But you never looked my way.  

          I want you to know that it’s okay if I disappear. If I fade. But if you need me, if you want to slip away for just a moment and sit on a lake and listen to the call of a loon, you know where to find me.

          I’ll be right here.