Maybe all I love is my own nostalgia.
I gave you a start, at least. I gave you a few soft years before things fell apart. But then the world split in two, and the part I can live in keeps shrinking. You slip so easily between both worlds; your whole generation is amphibious. Not mine. There’s nothing left I can offer you, you don’t need me at all. Before long I’d have dragged you down with me.
I won’t let that happen. You’re half Anne, after all.
The maelstrom covers the sound of my final ascent. I wonder what Anne would think of me now. She’d disapprove, I guess.
She was too much of a fighter to ever give up. I don’t think she had a suicidal thought in her whole life.
And suddenly, climbing the stairs, I realize that I can ask her right now if I want to. Anne is watching me from a far dark corner of the room, through weathered adolescent eyes opened to mere slits. Is she going to call me back? Is she going to berate me for giving in, say that she loves me? I hesitate. I open my mouth.
But she closes her eyes without a word.