Photos of childhood friends have found their way to my desk tonight.
Puzzled, perplexed, and excruciatingly nostalgic I sifted through them, often tearing as I did.
"Where have the years gone?" I wondered, utterly stunned by the reckoning that what was once shall never again be.
One particular memory, that of my friends and I sharing in the wonderful vista of our childhood park, has ushered itself into my consciousness. I remember the dusk slowly covering the skies and ending our bond and with it, of course, my inevitable departure. I had not come to terms with the truth, although it has taken refuge deep within. I knew that night that the dusk has marked the end of an era after which my friends and I shall be but wraiths in a time that is no more.
I see their photos today, matured and cunning, and I wonder, "where had my childhood darlings gone?".
My childhood, that which has preceded my voyages abroad, has ended ever so abruptly, without warning or a hint. She has escaped me so gently, so conspicuously.

I so strongly miss sitting atop that grassy hill with my darlings, gazing at the dusky heavens and thinking the world was ours to command. I so strongly regret saying goodbye.

I so strongly regret never returning.
Perhaps it is I, now, the forgotten wraith in a time that is now, yet is no more.