Again

In a city where time passed slowly, like viscous wine, there lived an old man named Albert. His house was on the corner of the street, and every evening he sat on his old armchair by the window, watching how the streets were filled with the lights of lanterns, like stars trying to pierce the darkness of the night. Albert was a man with gray hair and eyes that held thousands of stories. His heart was filled with memories, like an old book, from which sheets fell out from time to time, but each page kept a piece of his past life. One day, on a cold autumn evening, Albert remembered his youth. He closed his eyes, and once again he was young and full of vitality. He remembered the love that lifted him above the ordinary, like a bird that refreshes its wings in the spring wind. But fate was a treacherous friend, and one day she took away his love. Albert felt a void left in his heart, and an abyss opened up in his soul. He continued to live, but the light dimmed in his eyes, and every evening, sitting by the window, he saw only the shadow of the love that had been carried away with the past years. And now, again, this sadness gripped him. He felt the wind of the autumn night penetrating through the cracks in the windows, like icy fingers, and enveloping his soul. At that moment, he realized that time does not heal wounds, but only muffles the pain. And now, in his senile loneliness, he again felt that heavy burden of lost moments. Again he was left alone with memories, looking out the window at the street, where fleeting shadows of the past flew by. And although everything was quiet around him, an unspeakable hymn to bygone times sounded in his soul.