Ferryman.

You have your life and I have mine. Distinct and separate, still they intertwine
How this came about is strange to say. Sometimes how we stay together is stranger still. Different in so many ways, we share an understanding that defies comprehension, though we share some things too. And we have shared. Which forges these bonds of choice: malleable, flexible, but ready to snap taut at any moment and stop the fall. Make the landing safe.

Sometimes I think I do not understand respect and the part it plays in all of this: that prerequisite so hard. And so confusing. “Respect the weak”; that’s contrary, but then “respect the strong” just doesn’t fit. But it does, and in the strangest ways, the strangest shapes, respect acts like the veins that allows the blood of the feelings we feel to circulate and not stagnate.

Yet still there is this heaviness I feel when I hear your voice, think of you as I sometimes do, perhaps wonder what you are doing at this very moment. What ordinary job you are doing extraordinarily, as I know you do, even when you do not.

Because I know you … care. Such a heavy, hard, difficult-to-swallow, let alone regurgitate, word. So hard to force out of my throat, unwilling to let such bulk pass its natural constraints.

Care. A watchful eye, a thought in the back of your mind, primed for action. A state of readiness for when intervention is required. Often, in a way, it requires no effort to maintain this: things happen naturally and that is enough; more than enough.

Sometimes emergency prompts action, however, and then you move swiftly, accurately, pointedly, putting out fires and helping with the aftermath.

And though you know it not, perhaps, except I know you do: I have made you a silent promise. Strange, young, still it remains and at times resurfaces in a swell of emotion. I have promised to care for you by outliving you. I will pay the ferryman.

It is why I do not collect those like you. Why I filter and fight and argue to stop the ranks growing, I cannot live forever, but I will not shirk my duty; my promise.

Friend.

It means ‘forever’.