Written in 1st POV, dedicated to you, who can’t seem to let “memories” go.
My classmates, the ones I used to laugh with in the back row, are now just familiar silhouettes. I can still hear the echo of our snorts bouncing off the cold classroom walls, and smell the faint chalk dust that clung to our clothes after a long day.
My colleagues, who once hovered around the microwave spilling the teas over reheated noodles, feel like ghosts drifting through the office air I no longer breathe.
The girls next door I talked to on lazy weekend afternoons, slippers scraping on the hallway tiles, the scent of instant coffee floating between our doors, don’t knock anymore.
Even the baristas at my favorite café, who once slid my drink across the wooden counter before I opened my mouth, hesitate now. The bell above the door still jingles the same way, the espresso machine still hums in the background, but something is missing. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s who I used to be when they knew me.
And then there’s you.
The one who lived rent-free in my head, whose voice I carried like a soft static in my ears.
I remember the glow of your screen lighting my half-asleep face at midnight, the warmth of your words trickling through my tired mind. My eyes were heavy, my breath slow, but I stayed because it was you. Always you.
And now, even you are gone.
Some people leave quietly, with no storms nor explanations.
Some leave with slammed doors and sharp sentences thrown like broken glass.
Most just drift away the way fog lifts, slow, subtle, until one day the world looks different and I can’t remember when the change happened.
It hit me today, the quiet violence of time.
How people fade the way perfume does on a worn T-shirt.
How the ones who once filled the air around me can disappear, leaving only faint outlines and half-remembered laughter.
And I keep thinking about all the energy I poured into being likable.
All the “yes” I forced through clenched teeth.
All the versions of myself I sanded down, reshaped, softened, just to fit in someone else’s palm. Only for them to slip away anyway, like water through my fingers.
Like touching a bruise I didn’t notice forming, It aches in a way that feels both sharp and dull.
If people are only meant for a chapter, why did I sculpt my whole life around them?
But maybe this is the reminder that settles warm in my chest:
I’m allowed to place my energy where the air feels lighter, where laughter doesn’t feel earned, where I can breathe without shrinking myself.
I’m allowed to outgrow people who no longer feel like home.
I’m allowed to build a life that hums with its own quiet joy, even if no one else hears the melody.
Because when everyone else becomes a stranger again, I’m still here.
Still me.
Still holding the memories that cling like soft traces of perfume, faint, familiar, and proof that for a moment, they mattered.