Prologue
They will tell it as a small thing: a passerby, a shadow that brushed my world and moved on. Let them tell it that way.
Not all legends need crowns. Some are born of the look that lingers too long, the hush that carries more truth than a thousand speeches.
He came like a season with no name ~ neither the softness of spring nor the slow surrender of autumn, but a thin, sharp time between, where wind takes both promise and grief. He lived in a seam: loneliness stitched to slow healing.
He wore divinity like a bruise, smelled of sin and rain. He was all edges ~ flawless for a breath, flawed for a lifetime. Convenient, composed, and always hiding more.
A crack opened in the veneer, and I saw what lay beneath: flowers with thorns; fairies with blood; a heart torn by the world. I sit now and ask the dark: did he deserve it?
If he was never merely a visitor, what then? Phantom, unspoken promise, a memory too tender to be said aloud?
When I close my eyes, he returns ... not as a guest, but as absence made audible. He was the visitor I could not keep; he was the visitor my chest learned to carry like an old, bright wound.
I write not to hold the past, but to stop forgetting. No one will understand: he was more than a passerby. He left me flowers that will not wither, and I will wait as if waiting itself were holy.
He was the one my heart kept waiting for…
even after he was long gone.
