LAST NIGHT WHEN WE WERE YOUNG

Last night when we were young
Love was a star, a song unsung
Life was so new, so real, so right
Ages ago last night

She remembered that summer night seeing him standing at the end of the garden Gatsby-like and reflected how new everything seemed back then; the grass wet with the pre-dawn dew and the mellow moon lingering like a party guest reluctant to go home, everything had a tangible sense of aliveness and no more evident was this than their first kiss which felt like delicious pulsing currents of electricity as their lips connected in a passionate embrace.

This sense of the new carried over for the following weeks as Katie floated on the wings of a dream that she truly believed was shared with Michael as they spent the long days of August in a mutual reverie, mostly locked in each other's arms under the shade of ancient trees and forgetting all about the rest of the world that existed outside of their obsessive passion.

It never occurred to her back then to doubt her lover's sincerity in matching her enthusiasm for their future life together.

But as September eventually rolled around and time finally caught back up with her, she remembered how the winds of change could be felt in the sudden shift of atmosphere and the dream of summer had been brought to an abrupt and sudden close like an ending for one of those Antonioni movies that Katie had pretended to understand but had no real idea of what had just happened in the story or what it even meant.

Today the world is old
You flew away and time grew cold
Where is that star that shone so bright
Ages ago last night?

He'd left as mysteriously as he'd appeared and Katie was now changed irrevocably. No clue has there been given to prepare her for his sudden disappearance other than one of his final typically enigmatic statements he'd left hanging in the air like he was some sort of beatnik poet:

"You know cormorants are already leaving to head south for the winter and it's only just turned September?"

Shaking her head, she'd been honest enough to admit she didn't know that, not deducing that it was a personal metaphor for his soon-to-be departure from her life.

It took about a week for Katie to finally realise and accept he was gone for good and in that time she had evolved from being a love-struck adolescent to a cynical young woman. Somewhere in the midst of that transition, she'd lost something profound, not just the sense of believing in the idea of a future shared with Michael that had now turned out to be an illusion as transient as the morning mist but a permanent doubt that men could ever be trusted.