I look at you with longing in my eyes, through a pane of glass 5,000 miles thick, there where you walk, without looking back, your hand luggage trailing from your shoulder, nonchalantly, as if you had no care in the world. While here, rooted to the spot, stand the two men in your life, who before this farewell had never met. And I, blemished by the red tear in each eye, stand transfixed by the vision of you, disappearing, almost within my grasp, but already an ocean away, through that glass, and approaching the escalator that will carry you down and into the distance that I will only be able to imagine. So I wait till first your feet cease to be, then your smooth legs, your narrow waist, the shoulders, and last of all your head, topped by the pompom on your beret. That, then is goodbye, and it has no face, only your lovely receding reverse. This is where never seeing you again begins, never holding you. This is where the fragments of me must begin again to be alone, without the welcome of your kiss. I turn to the big, coarse man beside me, your other, secret, desire, and he is blurred through my tears as I shake his unflinching hand, as if somehow this parting must be sealed by a truce to make it respectable or complete. My outstretched hand tries to ball into a fist. I have to wrench it flat. We are both grieving here, even though he shows no trace. I look at him, coarse, brutish, unmoved, so it seems. All the things I am not. All the things I could not give you. And it is too late now to try. So I turn my back on the 5,000 miles of glass that hide you, towards whatever lies ahead, leaving my future out there, behind me, in your hands, to be buried at sea, with the leftovers of this sad day, and the pieces of this man.