At least the names will always stay,
etched in ink, unchanged, unchanged.
No tide of time, no drift, no day
will shift the echoes once arranged.

They rest within my contracts sealed,
bound to the moments that we knew—
not to the faces time revealed,
but to the souls I journeyed through.

For who they were is who remains,
not who they grew to be, afar.
The past is carved in steady names,
not scattered by the shifting stars.