Prologue : The Echo of Us
There are moments when the past finds me.
Not in loud, crashing waves
but in the quiet things.
A song plays in the background of a café,
one we never listened to together,
but somehow, it still reminds me of him.
The air feels heavy, like it knows something I don’t.
Like it’s carrying a message I’m too afraid to hear.
I sip my coffee, close my eyes for just a second,
and suddenly, I’m somewhere else.
I see him.
Not here, not now, but in a place that still exists inside me.
A slow morning with tea brewing,
his voice humming some half-forgotten tune,
the way sunlight made a home on his skin.
We never rushed. We never had to.
Love had a way of making time feel endless.
I wonder if he ever feels it too
that shift in the air, that weight in his chest,
like a memory trying to remind him that it was real.
Or maybe it’s just me.
I tell myself I’ve moved on.
I wake up, I breathe, I laugh, I live.
But sometimes, in the in-between moments, when the world is still
I feel it.
Him.
Us.
I wonder if love like ours ever really disappears,
or if it just finds new ways to stay,
written in the spaces between then and now,
whispered in songs that shouldn’t hurt but do.
Maybe some loves aren’t meant to be questioned.
Maybe they just exist,
not in the present, not in the future,
but in the spaces we carry them.
Some loves never leave.
They just learn to stay silent.
And this?
This is my way of speaking for it.
