The day she become a Memory

I met her on a Tuesday. I remember because Tuesday's are usually forgettable. The bus was late and the sky was grey and I had spend the entire morning wishing the day would end before it has properly begun.

She was standing at the bus stop with a book in her hand. Not reading it. Just holding it. There was something about that which made me look twice. I did not speak to her that day. For the next few days we keep seeing each other. Same bus stop. Same morning. Different silences.

Eventually one morning she looked at the empty space behind me as asked Is this seat taken?

I said no. It wasn't. But somehow after that day it never felt empty again. The weather. The bus. Books we had never finished. Then slowly everything else too.

She told me she was afraid of becoming nothing at all. She laughed. I remembered thinkimb her laughter sounded like something then world has accidentally gotten right.

Love did not arraive dramatically. It grew quietly. In shared food. In gossips about irrelevant people that I have never met. Un knowing when the other person was tired. In rembering small details that other people ko please wouldn't find important. She learned when I pretended I was ok when I was not.

We become eid part of each other's routine. And perhaps that was the most dangerous kind of love. The kind that becomes so ordinary that you begin beleiving it always existed.

Then life begins asking questions that neither of us knew how to answer. She received an oppertunity to another city. I had responsibility that kept me where I was. We talked about trying long distance. We promised to call. We promised that distance would not change anything. We had no labes to the thing between us.

The last time I saw her we stood at the same bus stop where we had met first. Neither of us said what we were thinking. The bus arraived she got on. I stayed behind.

And that was it. Years later I still pass that bus stop sometimes. Thar seat beside me. But I no longer think if it as something that is missing.

Some people are not meant to be there forever. Doem are meant to become the reason and ordinary Tuesday becomes unforgettable.

And sometimes love does not end because it was false.

Soemtimes it ends because two people can live each other sincerely and still be unable to live the life we wanted. I loved her. She lived me. For a while that was enough. Then it wasn't. And perhaps that is the most honest love story I heard.