So, do you know when I remember you? It’s in the spaces between seconds.
It’s not in the loud hours or the tired nights, it’s in the pauses between them. When the world exhales and forgets to breathe for a moment, that’s where you live. In the almosts. In the might-have-beens. In that half-beat between when my heart forgets to beat and then painfully remembers how to.
You know, I don’t remember the sound of your laugh anymore, not fully, but I remember how it felt like sunlight spilling into a place that never saw dawn. I don’t remember your exact words, but I remember the quiet after them, the kind that used to hum like safety and now hums like ghosts.
Some days I tell myself I’m fine, and I almost believe it. Then the kettle whistles, or a stranger says your name, or a song decides to hurt me on purpose, and suddenly I’m right back there. Right back in that tiny room where the air knew your shape. Right back in that night where I thought we were infinite.
It’s funny, everyone talks about memories like they’re solid things, like photographs in albums. But mine are liquid. They slip through everything I try to contain them in. They spill into my mornings, stain my afternoons, soak into my sleep. And I let them. Because forgetting you would mean forgetting the only version of me that ever felt real.
You once told me that love is supposed to make you whole. Maybe you were right, maybe you weren’t. Maybe love just makes you aware of the holes you didn’t know existed before. Maybe that’s why I keep writing to you even when you’ve stopped listening. Because language is the only way I can pretend you’re still somewhere on the other end of the silence.
I think I’ve made peace with not finding peace. Maybe that’s what growing up is, learning to live with the ache instead of trying to erase it. Letting it hum softly in the background, like a secret song only I can hear.
So, do you know when I remember you? It’s in the spaces between seconds
-aaditya.
Aaditya Bajpai 