Memory is nothing but a door we knock on whenever longing intensifies, only to find behind it a vast world of details we thought had faded, yet they seem to be waiting for us to return.
How deceptive memories can be. We believe they have fallen asleep in the far corners of our minds, but they seep into us like the dawn’s light through a half closed window. They unfold before our eyes with details so small, we once overlooked them, unaware that we had stored them deep in our hearts.
I remember the day we wandered through the museum together, how I watched you as you admired the paintings, as if you were listening to the colors’ whispers, as if you were searching for a heartbeat in the strokes of the brush. You would explain every painting to me, and you were present in each moment of its depiction. Your eyes gleamed with a passion that no wall could contain. I listened to you more than I looked at the artwork, because everything seemed more alive when you spoke of it.
How could I forget the way we walked in the rain, without an umbrella to shield us? Leaving the sky above us free to write its stories with raindrops. You used to say that rain, like memories, comes without warning, washes over us uninvited, yet somehow cleanses the heart too. I did not know then that some memories never fade that they remain suspended in the corners of the mind as if they happened just moments ago. And every time we found a place that once embraced us, your voice would return to dwell within it.
Today, I stand before the museum doors, move between the bookshelves, and walk beneath the rain alone. But I am not searching for anything new. Instead, I look for traces of you between features and objects, as if a page has fallen from the book before me, and I can no longer find the place where I had once bookmarked our story.
After being the light that illuminated me, your absence became the darkness that dimmed me. A quiet shift, almost imperceptible, yet felt in every space you once touched.