Time travel

​The paving stone is hollowed with centuries of use.  Feet unnumbered have passed here, each impression carving molecules of rock from the surface of the stone, wearing it down with the grim persistence of repeated motion over time.
 
I stood here twice before. The first time was the summer I turned twenty.  I was travelling through Europe on my student Interrail card.  I’d ‘done’ France and Austria, moved on to Italy and to Rome.  I stood here, mesmerised by the sight of the Coliseum and by the ancient pavement which ran alongside, stones which had borne the feet of emperors.   I felt connected to lives long past and invincible with the surety of youth.
 
Years later I watched my seventeen year old son hop from slab to ancient slab on our last family holiday before he turned eighteen and travelling with parents stopped being cool.  He stood here, on this exact spot, carefree and laughing, his face alight
with the joy of life.  He was tall and tanned and handsome.  I watched and saw an invisible thread connecting him to my twenty year old self, linked by this same stone.  In that moment, he stood, invincible.
 
Now I stand here alone.  My son is gone.  Lost in the  mundane tragedy of a car crash.  He was nineteen.  He has no future.  And I reflect on the deceitful past, promising a life which was not to be. 

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