Last Trip Home

Written for Sunday Whirl Wordle. Our host is
Brenda Warren; her prompt words for this week are
shown below. Here’s where the prompts took me.

lifetime, share, relax, connect, place, last,
class, awe, home, will, years, & trip 

For years, Faith had rehearsed what she might say if she ever saw Jeremy again. The war had taken him east, and the flood had taken her north, and somewhere between those disasters, they had simply lost touch with each other.

She almost missed him entirely. She was on the return trip of the Staten Island Ferry, standing at the rail, trying to relax after a tiring day judging dance auditions, when she spotted a familiar silhouette near the bow. The tilt of his shoulders. The way he stood with his hands in his pockets, as if the whole world were a place he just couldn’t figure out.

Her heart did something terribly inconvenient.

She crossed the deck slowly, giving herself time to reconsider; she didn’t.

“Jeremy?”

He turned, and the awe on his face was so complete and sincere, she felt a warmth embrace her like a full body hug. His eyes went wide, then soft, then something she couldn’t quite name.

“Faith.” And when he said her name, it sounded like home.

They talked for the entire crossing, laughing softly, their voices low and careful and then less careful …. as if a lifetime hadn’t passed between them. He told her about his work abroad. She told him about teaching ballet class. They didn’t speak about the long silence between them; there was no need. The years will do what years do: they separate, they scar, they also somehow share the weight of what is lost.

When the ferry docked, neither of them moved immediately.

“I don’t want this to be our last conversation,” she admitted.

He smiled …. the one she remembered. “It doesn’t have to be …. not if we connect it to the next one.”

They walked off the ferry together, into the evening light, choosing to begin again.

NAR©2026
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This is “Still Crazy After All These Years” by Paul Simon

Wordle 757

^{Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.}