I am eating the last of the leftover lettuce.
Radish metaphors for our adventures, so seldom anymore.
Doubt creeps into my mind, every time.
Every time you drive off into the sunset, I say goodbye for the last time.
I steel myself a little for the possibility that this is the inevitable.
I have carried this suspicion for so long, it's silly.
I suspect I won't have any warning. Maybe it's more of a hope...
For years, I have held my breath a little every time I pick up your call, every "Open" click.
I wonder where I learned that little fear, maybe a long time ago? Something I never left behind?
Hope, then.
A little hope that you won't go the way of the Dodo, drooling and grinning at your own sad, punchlineless joke.
I don't want you to slow down. I don't want you to lie down to sleep and I see it a little, here and there.
I see your grand conflagration gradually extinquishing itself. Like a forest fire that finally runs out of fuel.
Part of me wishes it were true, that I could preserve you in my memory now, rather than waiting a lifetime for your dreams to slowly disappear.
That would be the greatest tragedy for you, to disappear.

But, you have many more stories to tell, I think. Many more bright suns in your eyes.
You have to finish your own tale, anyway. As much as I fuss and quietly fret, and I know the ending, yes, but I don't know how we get there. Many chapters are still to be written.
Yes, many stories still to be told.