Esteemed through the passions of life, love, and loss … There is no doubt about it, Audrey was my clock-shadow in times of darkness. The unbridled chimes of love she shed for me in life were simply divine, a message of sorts, crafted as if mere angelic. It was approx. 8.30pm on that cold January night I got the call from my father.

“Your mother is dying.”

Time at that moment stopped dead for me. The shot of the black arrow from the depths of sudden darkness struck me as though a bolt of scolded lightning deep into my heart. The pain, that pain, there is no other pain like it on earth. I fell to my knees on cold stone. Instantly, my spatial awareness became filled with uncertainty. I couldn’t breathe. The air in me had gone. What now? I thought. Am I in a lucid dream? This has to be a ruse, right?

Wrong.

The remits of reality pitched against the breath of life swallowed me whole. I died that night, and a part of me since then has never returned. It wasn’t your fault. It just happened. It was your time to go. But now, in the sands of perpetuity I must wander from this life until the next. But why?

So, who am I now?

I’m a nobody, just a son of a mother who once loved him dearly, fed him, clothed him, would’ve given her last breath to save him from the clutches of death. Since the beginning of my time here not once did you ever leave my side.

So, who am I now?

I am lost, and will forever walk in shadow, for the saviour of my clocktower is no longer with me, and now time has no bearing upon my life, for in time, like you, I too will diminish. I will be your shield that once covered my back. I will be your voice in the dark, the bright light upon your fields of befallen dreams. I will carry the torch that lights the darkness that you once held aloft.

So, who am I now?

I am the legacy of your kin, the breath in your forgotten fire, the one who now walks alone … but mostly, I am the story behind your life.