I started walking at night. I don't know why, maybe because I couldn't bear lying still anymore, trapped between the walls of my room and my thoughts. The streets are empty at that hour. The world feels quieter. Like it matches the emptiness inside me.
I pass the same places we once walked together. The café where you'd steal my coffee just to see me pretend to be annoyed. The park bench where we sat for hours, saying nothing and saying everything. The corner where I first kissed you, nervous, hopeful, stupidly sure we'd never lose what we had.
Now, those places feel haunted. Not by ghosts, but by echoes…the sound of what used to be, fading every time I pass by, leaving only the ache behind. I wonder if you ever think of them. Or if those memories belong only to me now.
Some nights, I stand there and stare at the bench, or the corner, or the café window, and I try to feel something other than regret. But I can't. All I feel is the weight of everything I didn't do, didn't say.
I don't know how long I can go on like this. Each night I tell myself I'll stop walking. I'll stop looking back. But when the darkness comes, I find myself out there again, chasing what's gone.
And still, I'm here. That part hasn't changed. But maybe, maybe the fact that I'm out here at all means something. Maybe it means that some part of me is still searching, even if I don't know what for. Maybe it means I haven't fully given up, no matter how much it feels like I have.
I don't know. I really don't. But tonight, as I stand under the empty sky, breathing in the cold night air, for the first time, I let the silence fill me without trying to fight it. And for just a second, the pain isn't the only thing I feel. There's something else. I don't have a name for it yet.
But it's there.
And maybe that's where I have to start.