There is no Last Ferry

He always tried to time his departures when you could just barely make out the Church Tower at Jamestown...a sight he had seen in his visits but still was a bit haunting....300 year old stones assembled for people to worship.  He knew something about worship...but for him it was more in the form of a person and not a building.

He was on the 2nd deck observation deck, the ferry trailing a bit of a muddy wake as the recent storms had churned the river and the late afternoon-almost evening air had a slight chill like it was starting to sense Autumn.  He felt the beginning of some ache like he always did at this point...going past Glass House, starting to move into the deeper water.  

He began to miss her the moment she turned.  While she was still in his view he started to sense the brief splintering of her presence and like a spill he started to feel an emptiness starting to spread.

It tended to peak when he could see the Church tower, which is why he always departed in a bit of the twilight.  And it just felt like a reminder...of things that can endure.  Things that can stand through bits of time.  Long times.

It sometimes made him feel better, sometimes it didn't.  When she was with him his eyes scoured her, recording memories of her face, her look.  He wanted to pull her inside of him, to capture her in her perfect state and preserve it.  He tried to remember that she made the length of time irrelevant, that regardless of how long she was there it was never long enough.  

And he couldn't quite remember how she looked because each time he saw her after an absence she was exactly prettier than before...and perhaps that was the absence and his memory colliding but he always noticed something new...there was always something fresh.  

Which made the departures even more maddening.  

Soon the faint outline of the Church Tower faded against the blackening backdrop of trees and the rest of Virginia.  It felt like he had just closed his eyes.

He furiously tried to remember exactly what she looked like...how she looked like to him.