I still remember how it felt to hold your hand freely. No guilt, no pretending, just warmth against warmth, like our palms had decided long before we did. Once, we kissed on the train. The world outside blurred into a moving watercolour. London sliding past in streaks of grey and gold, and for a moment I thought: this is how belonging feels. Then the doors opened, and belongings left with you.
Autumn came early this year, and I see us everywhere. In the condensation on café windows, in scarves pulled high, in the way people fold themselves into the cold. Layers upon layers, like we were: truths, disguises, tenderness, fear. The air still smells like us, sharp, alive, impossible to name. Remember the bridge? I walk that bridge every day. It remembers what we tried to forget. The wind there is the same, and, believe me, it still knows your name.
How would you feel if I told you I wrote a book about us? To understand what survived when we didn’t.
I’ve been reading the English poets again. Auden wrote, “If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.” I think he understood what I didn’t, that sometimes love’s purpose is only to reveal what we’re capable of feeling. Maybe that’s what I’m doing: turning ache into language, distance into story.
Because some people move on, and others write. And I’m still walking that bridge, carrying the weight of every layer we never learned to take off.