Things I remember

※ rain hitting the windowpane

There are things I remember about you that seemed insignificant at the time, small details that only gathered weight later on. You never appeared comfortable with affection; a compliment would be met with a sudden change of subject, and a gesture of kindness often received more gratitude than the situation required, as though you were apologizing for having caused someone the trouble. When people tried to move closer, you sometimes stepped back, slipping away without appearing to notice that you had done so.

At the time, these details felt entirely unrelated. Looking back, they seem connected to the great deal of time you spent alone. Long walks, long drives, long evenings behind a closed door: if something troubled you, it remained there. I never saw you ask anyone to carry part of the weight, and whatever battles took place happened somewhere beyond view, contained entirely within your own silence.

Occasionally, there were small signs: eyes slightly red from lack of sleep, a conversation cut short, or a silence that lingered longer than usual. None of it was dramatic, nothing that would have drawn attention from a distance; they were the sort of details that become visible only after enough time has passed to arrange them into a pattern. I remember seeing couples together and watching your expression change briefly before returning to normal, a fleeting moment that never lasted long enough to become a conversation. Most things with you did not.

There were futures you spoke about occasionally: children, a house, a different kind of life than the one you happened to be living. The subject would appear unexpectedly and disappear just as quickly, as though the act of mentioning it had already revealed more than you intended. What I remember most clearly, though, are the conversations about things further away: books, philosophy, religion, or dreams. You remembered your dreams in remarkable detail, entire places surviving the journey into morning. You described them with the same attention other people reserved for events that had actually occurred, and sometimes it seemed as though you were searching for something beyond ordinary life, some answer that remained just outside your reach.

Perhaps everyone is searching for something, and some people simply become better at hiding it. The older I get, the less certain I am about what other people carry. We see fragments, a few habits, a few conversations, a collection of expressions observed across years, until one day the person is gone, and those fragments are all that remain. We arrange them carefully, adjusting the edges, and hope they resemble the original shape.

It has been quiet here lately. The chair by the window remains where it always was, the trees continue moving in the wind, and the afternoon light still crosses the room at the same angle, as if most things continue exactly as before. Sometimes I catch myself staring out the window longer than necessary. If you were here, you would probably laugh, telling me to stop sitting around and go do something useful.

↯ go do something useful