Atlantis
after kafka.
"Will I ever see you again?"
She can see it, see everything—the grass, the land, the rocks, the ravine, the station, the treetops, the little blue house on the corner. She can see everything but what's screaming inside his head.
Because he still can only see the water, stretching forever, flooding the earth and touching his toes, her body disappearing again into blue-grey fog.
He remembers his name, but cannot find a way back home; he watches her leave, her only trace a shimmer of color and a trail of unreturned goodbyes. She fades towards a city underwater, of lights, of life, of the living: Atlantis, the legend, unreal.
"Of course."
Spirits live a thousand lives in a thousand places—water, ever-moving, ever-changing, Kohaku River, a little pink shoe.
Yes, I will see you again, but in some other life, when he is no longer a river but an ocean, the kind that stops him from following her forever into the end of the world.