There are people who leave a life without leaving the city.
The street remains. The house remains. The balcony keeps its shape. The curtain still falls in the same folds. The same bus still stops at the same stop. 𝗔 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗶𝘁𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗮𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱. 𝗜𝘁 𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗽𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀.
I could not use my car this morning, so I had to take the bus. The nearest stop happened to be across from his house.
I could have walked another five minutes. I did not.
I sat down with music in my ears and waited. For a while there was only the music, and the wait. Then the building slowly separated itself from everything around it: the balcony, the edge of the frame, the same curtain, a window left slightly open at the top. Nothing of the room. Nothing of him. Only those familiar fragments, still belonging to the world.
The thoughts arrived underneath the music.
Then I began to write.
𝘐𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘍𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘢𝘺.
God, Fridays have become strange lately.
There was a time when Friday meant the pleasant bureaucracy of being in love. Where should we eat. Which reservation should we keep. What should I wear. Straight hair or waves; which one would he rather see that evening. Work ending and the rest of the day opening. Sometimes a restaurant, sometimes wine, sometimes something homemade from his kitchen while I sat nearby doing my daily reading, my book open in front of me, listening without listening to cupboards opening, a knife against a board, water running. The smell of dinner reaching the room before he did.
𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝘂𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗶𝘁. 𝗡𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗶𝘁 𝗸𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗯𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱.
Fridays used to fold around us so naturally that I never noticed they had become ours.
Lately, every Friday seems to carry something it was not invited to bring.
Only last Friday, opening my blog to publish something I had written about time, love, and what grief leaves behind when both have moved on, I found the first small sign from him in months. After so much silence, the slightest recognition had the weight of an event. Later that same day I was under the sun, drinking wine beside a man I liked, already carrying that faint and almost comic sense that this too might disappear before it had properly learned its own shape.
And now another Friday had brought me here: music in my ears, a bus on its way, his window across the road.
Lately the past has had an inconvenient habit of arriving at the same hour as whatever comes next. Something old brushes against the present just as something new begins to fade at the edges. The heart barely has time to turn its face.
The window was open only slightly. The same curtain rested at the edge of the frame.
I thought of the plants.
I could not see them, but I knew they would be alive.
𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲.
He noticed thirst early. He moved them closer to the light. He changed the soil before anything began to fail. He paid attention to a yellowing leaf as if it mattered. There was something almost disarming in the patience of his hands around fragile things.
I had believed that kind of tenderness would make him careful with me too.
𝘈𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴.
𝗜 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴.
Still, he had been tender with me. Memory does not need to become dishonest simply because something ended badly.
The window told me nothing about his life. It did not tell me where he was or what his Friday looked like. It only gave the distance a shape.
𝘈 𝘧𝘦𝘸 𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘯 𝘨𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘴.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗼𝗻 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝘀.
There is something strange about living near someone one may never see again. Distance feels as though it ought to be grander. An ocean. Another country. A long flight and a clock showing the wrong hour. Something the body can understand.
Instead there are streets one could cross in minutes. Rain falling on both roofs. The same pale afternoon passing over two lives that no longer touch.
𝗔 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗮𝗿 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆.
That is the part geography cannot explain.
Friday had once belonged to a life I knew without thinking about it. Now it had gone back to being only a day of the week.
The window did not give any of that back.
It did something quieter.
For a few seconds, it made another life feel close enough to exist outside memory.
There was a strange comfort in the fact that nothing happened. No answer arrived with the bus. No meaning emerged from the window. Two people who had once known each other very well simply continued to exist in the same city.
There is tenderness in that too, something quiet and without ambition, with no question left to ask and nowhere particular to go.
The bus was late enough for the song to change twice.
Eventually it came.
I got on, and the house disappeared in the ordinary way things disappear from a moving vehicle: first slowly, then all at once. Another building covered it. Then traffic. A supermarket. A woman on a bicycle. Windows belonging to people I had never met.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗼𝗻𝘆𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻.
For several stops, the window stayed with me.
By then, all I wanted was to lie beside something familiar.
Not to return. Not to ask anything.
Just to put my head down and let the body forget itself for a while.
𝘞𝘢𝘳𝘮𝘵𝘩. 𝘉𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩. 𝘚𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴.
Something older than longing.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝗼𝗱𝘆.
I wanted to close my eyes and stay there until it passed.