The lake is calm today, I notice, staring down at it. Was it this calm when the girl drowned in it, I wonder, staring into its depths. Was the girl able to see all around her, as she sank to the ocean floor, unable to breathe? Or had she not been able to see up from down?

It hadn’t been this clear when I first asked Katherine out…It had been choppy, and cloudy, not at all like this clear glass. Of course, that’s why I chose today to come out here, I suppose…I only come when it’s clear-close enough to remind me of her, different enough to take away some of the pain.

Did it hurt as the girl’s lungs burned for oxygen and got only water? Or did she lose consioiusness before she fell in the water? What did Katherine feel, when it was her turn to slip into the ocean’s death, without so much as a cry for help?

It had been windy, on the day I asked her out-that’s why the water had been so stirred up. Her hair had been blowing around, whipping in front of her eyes, but she grinned good naturedly and bore it, no matter how it happened.

She was always doing that-grinning it, and bearing it, as if she could simply out weight all the problems in the world. Did she go to her death that way, I wonder, grinning calmly as if she wasn’t about to leave me forever?

It had been night time-we’d both taken a nighttime walk. Me to clear my thoughts, her-I don’t know. Can’t exactly ask now, can I? But I know how her eyes glistened in the moonlight, as she looked up at me.

I remember how hard it had been when I asked her out, and how terrified I was that she would refuse. She hadn’t though-she’d gone out on that date with me, and I never regretted it.

Now she’s gone, though, as dead as the girl who drowned in that lake, lost to the sea, and all I have left to remember her by is this lake, where a girl has now died, just like my wife. It hurts just standing here, looking at where a girl just like my wife had died, and I cry. But I come anyway; I come and I remember.

I will always remember.