This particular story came from the same prompt as my partner used here on Two Voices. We saw the same image. She went back in time, while I took a more 
lateral path. I serve up an alternative for your enjoyment.
City across the Bay
by Claudette J. Young
The steamer will splash along soon, its smokestack coloring the air with grime. I’ll watch it until sunset touches my back and then I’ll return home. I know you wish to come home, my love. I’ve heard your night voice calling me, as I wander our home, listening to your cries and your tears, always drawing me toward this point, to view the City across the Bay. So few can even see the City now. It has claimed the dreamers who once lived here.
Your dreams called you there. You would not heed my warnings about the siren song of that spired place with its pearlescent roofs. You heard only the promise of the melody that forever titillates the mind and heart; the sound which captures one’s soul and refuses to let it go.
My youth was spent, watching those witch-lights flicker on the water, knowing you were there, living out of time, out of place. Our love could not chain you to me. My arms could not secure you here. My song was the weaker one.
Soon the reaper will come for me, and I will know that for all time you will remember me and know what you could have had. You will know what the siren song has cost you as you exist in that City across the Bay. Do you see me here, now? Will you watch as I’m laid to rest? Will you regret the passage of time, or will you even notice its passage?
I love you first and always, my darling. Take solace in that knowledge. Remember me well.
Related articles
- Sweeter than Sirens (substanceovershadows.com)
- Sirens (ambermarshall.wordpress.com)
