The balcony curtain moved gently in the evening breeze; a thin cyan fabric, almost transparent, soft enough to let the light pass through but still there, like a quiet filter between us and the world outside.
Beyond it, the garden was alive in small, ordinary ways. People walking in circles along the pathway. A man on his phone, pacing. A child chasing something invisible. Two women talking, their hands moving more than their words.
Between us, on the small table, a faint coffee stain had settled into the wood; a careless ring from some earlier evening. Neither of us remembered when it got there. Neither of us had wiped it away.
She watched them for a while.
“You know,” she said, “I could probably walk down there and talk to at least three people.”
“I know,” I said.
“And I’d remember them. Not everything about them. Just… enough to keep them in my life.”
I nodded.
She turned to me. “You wouldn’t, would you?”
I took a moment before answering.
“No.”
“Why?”
I leaned back, looking through the curtain, at nothing in particular.
“I need to tell you something,” I said. “Not because you don’t know it… but because I’ve never said it properly.”
She didn’t interrupt.
“I’m not like you,” I continued. “you carry people with you. Even if you forget the details; what they wore, what they said; you remember to call them, to check in, to keep them close.”
“And you don’t?” She asked
“I carry everything else.” I sighed
She frowned slightly. “What does that mean?”
“I remember the exact shade of that woman’s dress,” I said, nodding toward the garden. “The way that kid laughed just now. The smell of the rain from yesterday evening. The taste of the tea we had last Sunday. Conversations from years ago; word for word, sometimes.”
She was quiet.
“I carry moments,” I said. “I carry memories. I carry the texture of things… even the silence between sentences.”
“But not the people.”
I shook my head.
“They stay where I met them,” I said. “In that place, in that time. I don’t bring them forward with me.”
“Why?” she asked, softer this time.
“I don’t know how,” I admitted. “Connecting with people feels like… something that needs constant tending. Calls, messages, starting conversations, continuing them. It doesn’t come naturally to me.”
“But you care about them.” She asked
“I do,” I said. “That’s the strange part. I care deeply. I just don’t know how to translate that into staying.”
She looked back at the garden.
“I’m the opposite,” she said after a while. “I forget things. I forget what people said, what they wore, even sometimes where we met.”
I smiled faintly. “I know.”
“But I remember to keep them,” she continued. “I call. I show up. I hold on to the person, even if the memory fades.”
“I’ve noticed.” I nodded
She turned to me again.
“So between the two of us… you’re carrying the stories.”
“And you’re carrying the people.” I added
There was a long pause. The curtain shifted again, briefly hiding the garden, then revealing it.
“Does it bother you?” she asked.
I thought about it honestly.
“Not in the way people think,” I said. “It’s not loneliness exactly.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s just… a realization.”
“What kind?”
I looked past her, through the cyan curtain, at the people moving below ; each of them being a part of someone else’s life.
“That I’m a person who walks through moments, feels everything deeply…”
“And then?”
“And then leaves with only what I can carry.”
“And what is that?”
I exhaled slowly.
“Stories. Memories. Fragments. The taste of things. The smell of places.”
She held my gaze.
Her phone buzzed softly on the table beside she. She glanced at it, smiled, and typed a quick reply.
Someone reaching her.
Someone she was carrying forward.
She put the phone down and looked back at me.
“And you’re okay with that?” she asked.
I looked at the quiet table. The faint ring of coffee that outlasted the evening it came from.
Then at the garden. People still moving, still connecting.
“I think this is just how I exist,” I said.
She didn’t argue. Just nodded.
The curtain moved again.
And between us, the coffee stain stayed;
like something that happened,
and stayed….
Another story, without anything else, just another story.
Comments
Post a Comment