Evenings spent on the orange slated patio, we’d sit and watch the sun go down. Ignoring the persistence of weeds that travelled through cracks in tiles and shaking the ants from our dusty bare feet. We inched closer to meditative state as the dusk took hold of the sky, flooding our view with shaded pastel purples and hues of soft deep blue. A coffee in one hand and an ice-cream in the other, you’d slurp and sigh to comfort profound silence. Tapping your foot in agreement of cricket’s song. This is what you came here for. This was your oasis. There is nowhere more imbued with your memory than this Southern French escape. The wayward mountainscape whispers of your absence; slow and subtle like the shallow breath of trees that now grow around your ashes. You linger here Seeped in the soil beneath dry yellow grass And held by the sun soaked air of the evening’s stretch. You linger here.