I have a rule that has worked for me, more or less, over the years: when I see their first grey hair, it’s time for me to leave.

It sounds callous—trust me, I know how vain it seems—but it’s worked for the best, more or less. I think it’s kinder this way in the long run. I see one grey hair on their head; I know my time is limited.

For the second hair, or when the lines of wrinkles start to deepen, I make plans, plant seeds, start hinting about my exit.

The third grey hair, I pack a small bag. I hop on a cart, travelling far away down a long and winding road, or catch a boat and promise to the captain that I will be a good hand, that I will be strong and reliable. Sometimes, I’ve joined armies, searching for a cause and a way to disappear.

It’s happened again and again over my life and I’m sure that this story is not unique. There are men with far lesser excuses than I who leave one day, without a word, and never return. There are tragedies in life greater than this.

After time and distance, I’m sure I’ve been scorned again and again as lazy, as unfit, as selfish and arrogant. If I could, I would like to scream that I’m none of those things. When I was younger, I believed that I really wasn’t any of those.

Now, I’m not sure. I used to believe that my leaving was noble, was necessary, and of course I had no other choice but to leave. I still don’t believe I’m lazy and selfish and arrogant for leaving.

I think I might be lazy and selfish and arrogant for looking for love in the first place, though. I’ve had enough love after lifetimes yet I still go back for more, more and more and more, each time promising it’ll be my last and each time failing miserably.

One would think that I’ve lived enough: in Mesopotamia, born on the banks of the Euphrates, the fifth son of farmers; Egypt at the height of the days of Pharos; Rome in its heyday, a gladiator who could not die; a scholar, charting the starts in the early days of the first millennia; a painter; a rich lout; a poor lout; a merchant and trader, faring the seas to the new world; back again, rich again, on the outs of a society that I did not fit into; to the new world once more, now not so new, as a businessman; a painter once more. I think I like painting the best, even after all these years. It’s a universal language—a way to be understood that transcends time and words.

I tell myself, each time, that it will be my last. That, after I leave my love, I will sit alone with my paints and let the world slouch on.

Each time, I fail. This life has so much to give! Connections, too, are rare. I will pass fifty, eighty, a hundred years before I meet someone who understands me and I them and, if one has ever felt that way, then one will know how hard it is to give that up.

I tell myself this again, now. She understands me; I understand her. We met in a great city, while they were building high towers to prove they could touch clouds. She is a writer. I, like so many times before, am a painter.

I fear I don’t have long left. It’s been a while now, that much I know, but I haven’t been precisely keeping track. After I leave her, after I wrench out my own heart, I won't promise it to another. Never again.

Now, she comes into my studio to get me, to walk home with me. We’ll stop by a new restaurant near our apartment on our way. She claims this place has the best thai food I’ll ever taste, and I smiled and agreed with her, but I fear that food these days never quite tastes the same.

For now, she comes up behind me. She wraps her arms around me and places her chin on my shoulder, watching me paint. I brush a few more strokes against the canvas, weaving the colours together. Her hand rushes through my hair and pauses by my right ear.

A pluck. I wince.

“Look,” she says, holding her finger in front of my eyes.

I squint and look between them. A single strand of my short hair. It’s not dark, though, it’s not the way it should be: it’s sleek silver, shining in the sun.

/r/liswrites