I learned too late that some things arrive quietly, not as miracles, but as mornings that keep happening. You stood there like breath, so constant I forgot it was a gift, so close I mistook it for forever.
You loved me in unfinished sentences, in glances that waited for permission. I treated your patience like background noise, a ceiling fan always spinning, never once asking what would happen if the power went out.
We were an almost that looked like certainty. Shared umbrellas, half-drunk teas, your name written in the fog on windows I wiped away too fast. I thought love was loud proof, I didn’t recognize the quiet hands holding me together.
Now the city performs without you. Traffic lights blink like tired eyes, cafés hum with conversations I no longer belong to. Every place we almost became something stands like a paused scene, waiting for actors who won’t return.
There’s a song playing somewhere, soft, grateful, too honest. It speaks of rewards we earn by staying, by noticing. I hear it now and understand, some lessons arrive as melodies long after the moment has passed.
I see you sometimes in reflections, not your face, but the way you looked at me. Like I was something worth choosing, even unfinished.
No one looks at me like that now, and I finally know what it meant.
If love could be rewound, I wouldn’t ask for more time. I’d ask for better attention. To hold what was given like it could leave. Because it did.
-S.K