It's strange, the way memory works. Some days it feels like my mind is a sieve, losing the simplest things—where I placed my keys, the name of the neighbor I've greeted a dozen times, even what I ate for breakfast yesterday. And yet, there are moments that refuse to fade, etched deeper with every passing year.
I can't recall what I wore to my wedding, not precisely. The dress was white, of course. My hair pinned back with pearls. But the details blur, as though the memory itself never rooted in me. And still—still—I can close my eyes and summon the exact shade of gray in the sky the morning Adrian left. I can remember the cedar scent of his jacket, the faint scratch of his stubble against my cheek when he kissed me goodbye.
Why do some moments slip away while others stay sharp enough to cut?
I live a quiet life now, the kind of life that looks whole from the outside. A cottage with ivy climbing its stones, a garden that blooms faithfully each spring. My days follow their rhythms—coffee in the morning, work at the library, evenings with a book in my lap, the silence pressing close around me. People assume I prefer it that way. Perhaps I've let them believe it.
The truth is harder.
I married once, after Adrian. It was brief, a life measured more in compromise than in joy. He was a good man—dependable, steady, the kind who noticed when the car needed new tires and always locked the door twice before bed. I tried, truly, to love him the way a wife should. But my heart was restless. It wandered in the dark, circling back to a single memory, a kiss held on a platform years ago.
It isn't fair to say I never loved my husband. I did, in my own way. But it was a muted love, pale and safe, like candlelight that never flares into flame. He deserved more than what I could give, and when he finally left, there was no anger between us. Just the heavy silence of two people who both knew something had always been missing.
I thought perhaps that missing piece had been buried long ago with the sound of that departing train.
And then, last night, a letter arrived.
The post had been late, shoved halfway through the door, folded once and creased. I almost missed it, tucked between bills and advertisements. But the moment I saw the handwriting, my breath caught.
It was unmistakable.
The slant of the letters, impatient and rushed, ink pressed a little too hard into the paper—as though the pen had been gripped tightly, unwilling to let go. I had traced that handwriting once, in the margins of his notebooks, in the countless letters he had written me during the brief months after he left. My fingers trembled before I even opened it.
Inside, just a few short lines:
Elara,
I don't know how to begin this, or if I should at all. But I'm back in town. For a while, at least. I'd like to see you—if you'd want that.
Adrian
I read it once, then again, then a third time, as though the words might change with repetition. My heart lurched, unsteady, betraying me with its speed. He was here. After all these years, after the silence that had stretched into decades, he was here again.
And he wanted to see me.
I pressed the letter to my chest, standing in the dim light of the kitchen, listening to the old clock tick on the wall. My hands shook so badly the paper rattled like dry leaves. For years, I had built my life around the absence of him, weaving routines that dulled the ache, convincing myself that the kiss we had shared was nothing but a relic.
And yet, the moment I saw his handwriting, everything inside me splintered. The ache came rushing back, raw and immediate, as though no time had passed at all.
I sat at the kitchen table for hours, staring at that letter. The tea in my cup went cold, untouched. The lamp hummed faintly, throwing soft light across the page. Questions swarmed me—what did he want? Why now? What had the years done to him?
And beneath all of it, a sharper, more dangerous question whispered: What had the years done to me?
I should have felt anger, perhaps. Or caution. But all I felt was a trembling anticipation I didn't know how to contain.
When I finally forced myself to bed, I couldn't sleep. My thoughts circled endlessly, pulling me back into memory.
The summer we met by the riverbank, when he dared me to race him barefoot across the stones and I lost, laughing, my feet bruised but my spirit soaring. The winter night when he kissed me for the first time, beneath a string of lanterns at the town fair, the world around us dissolving into blurred color and sound. The promises whispered under starlight, foolish and earnest, that we would never be apart.
Every memory I had kept locked away pressed against me now, demanding to be remembered, demanding to be felt.
And beneath it all, pulsing steady as my heartbeat, was the memory of our last kiss.
I rose before dawn, restless, the letter still on the table. The world outside was quiet, a pale gray mist hanging low over the garden. I traced his handwriting with my fingertip, the ink faintly raised under my touch.
He was here. After all this time, he was here.
I don't know if I'm ready to see him again. I don't know if I could bear it—to face the man who left, the man I never stopped holding in some secret corner of my heart.
But even as the thought of him floods me with fear, I know the truth.
I will go.
I will see him.
Because there are echoes that never fade, and some kisses are never truly lost.