Crescent moon and eye tattoos on fingers and wrist

The lamp came back on at half past four, the way you said it would if I kept the wick trimmed, and I stood at the gallery rail with the cold coming up off the Solway and counted the marks on the chart like you taught me. Eleven islands, seven of them drowned at high water. The moon was a thin paring over Criffel, and I thought of you on that ferry with your back to it.

Mrs Acland came up the stairs with the milk at six, which she never does, and asked what I was looking at. I said the sea. She said the sea does not need watching, it needs a sensible woman with a kettle. I told her the sea is the only thing on this coast that tells you the truth about the hour, and she laughed and went back down.

The eye is still on the lens housing where you painted it the summer before you left, a ring of white with rays spiked out to the rim. Father called it vanity. I call it the only honest instrument we had, because it never once pretended the light was anywhere but where it was. Yesterday a boat came in under it without a bell rung, and I knew the hull by its sound before I saw its lamp.

It was you. I am writing this so you have it in ink: the keeper's log is open on the table and I have put your name in the margin beside the time, 04:52, in the same small hand you used for the tide tables. Come home before the moon is full. The light will still be yours to tend if you want it.