“Memories have their own quiet logic; when you have loved someone, they remain everything to you, even when nothing of them is left in the world. And so we hold on to memories, because they are the last place where that person still exists.

This is my own memory:

A cold, damp day. The sky hangs low and grey, heavy with rain yet to fall. We were meant to meet in a small chapel on a hill, tucked within a garden where flowers slept, waiting for spring to wake them.

Neither of us knew if the other would come. I sat there, caught between nervousness and a fragile, aching hope. Wondering if it would truly happen. If I would really see you.

And then you were there.

In that instant, my heart gave way beneath me, and the world fell silent. The church, the people… all of it faded into nothing. There was only you and me, suspended somewhere outside of everything else.

The mass began, but I could not follow it. My thoughts refused to stay. I longed to look at you, yet I could not turn. All I could see was the faint mist of breath dissolving into the cold air. Somewhere nearby, a candle was burning itself out, its smoke curling softly through the space between us. I remember wishing, with a quiet kind of desperation, that the moment would never end.

At times, our hands brushed. Brief, almost accidental. I felt your pulse, steady and real. Your fingers were cold, and I wanted to take them into my own, to warm them, to hold them there. But I couldn’t. We couldn’t.

You are no longer mine to touch like that.