~~~


She was in the garden again, hands buried in the soil, planting things she wasn’t sure would bloom.

Some days she didn’t care if they did. She just needed to keep moving, keep growing something...

Anything...


The gate creaked behind her.


She didn’t look up at first. The wind had played tricks on her before.

Sounds...

Scents...

Songs on the radio that weren’t playing at all.

But this time...

Footsteps followed.


She turned, slowly.


He was thinner.

Older.


The same...


His eyes held that quiet fire she used to dream of. The one that had burned through her, every time he looked at her... Like she was the only thing in the world that ever made sense.


He didn’t speak right away. Just stood there, with the sky breaking open behind him... As if the universe itself paused, to hold this moment.


Then...


“I never stopped thinking of you...”


... His voice hoarse, from all the years he spent not saying it.


"Every morning, every damn sunset... It was you.”


... She didn’t know what to say. The silence between them had grown its own roots.


“I was a coward!”


He continued.


“Leaving the way I did… It wasn’t strength. It wasn’t for your good, no matter what I told myself. I left, because I was afraid. Because loving you meant changing everything... And I didn’t think I deserved that kind of love.”


He stepped closer.


“I thought leaving would keep you from the storm inside me. But I see now… The real storm, was in the leaving.”


... Her eyes shimmered, but no tears fell. She had cried them all years ago.


... He reached out, not to touch her... Just to let his presence meet hers.


“I don’t ask for forgiveness. I just wanted you to know… You were never forgotten. Not for a single breath...”


She looked at him.


Not the way she used to, not with the wild bloom of spring in her chest. But with the calm ache of a river that had carved through stone.

Time had shaped her...

So had his absence.


Her voice was quiet, but steady.


“You left, when all I needed was for you to stay. You disappeared like the last warmth of autumn, and I had to teach myself how to survive the winter...”


She stepped closer, not in anger, but with the weight of everything unspoken between them.


“I searched for you in songs. In crowds. In the way the rain fell some mornings. And I hated you for a long time... For choosing silence, over us.”


... She paused, her eyes softening.


“But… I never stopped loving you, either.”


... His breath caught.


“That love just, changed..."


She said...


"It grew roots. It made me stronger... You were a wound. But you also became a part of the story I tell myself when I need to remember how deep I can feel.”


... She looked at the earth beneath their feet, the garden she’d been tending alone...

Then back at him.


“You came back. And that means something. But it doesn’t undo what was done.”


And with a faint, almost broken smile...


“I’m glad you told me. Truly. But this time, if you leave… Let it be without promises.”


... He stood still, as if her words had tethered him to the ground.


The silence between them wasn’t empty now. It was heavy with the truth they’d finally spoken, soaked in the weight of things that never got the chance to bloom.


He nodded slowly, eyes glistening.


“I won’t make promises."


He said quietly.


“Not the kind I already broke. I just needed you to know... That you were the only thing that ever made me feel alive...”


... The wind stirred the garden, brushing past her hair. Like the ghost of an old song.


She turned back to her flowers, kneeling again, hands finding the soil. But her voice reached him, soft as breath...


“I know.”


He lingered a moment longer, watching her. Not with hope of picking things up where they left off, but with reverence. For her strength, her pain, her blooming...


And then, without another word, he turned and walked back through the creaking gate.


The garden was quiet again.


But the ache remained. Just gentle enough to live with.


~~~


Days passed.


She didn’t see him again...

Not in the garden, not in the town...

But he remained...


In the sudden stillness before a storm, in the lyrics of an old song that found its way to her ears when she wasn’t looking for it.


She no longer waited for him.


But she did wonder.


At night, when the wind sighed through the trees, she’d sometimes whisper things into the dark. Things she might have said if he’d stayed, just a little longer. She didn’t know if he heard them. But it helped her heart rest softer.


She kept planting.


The flowers bloomed.


~~~


He wandered...


Not aimlessly, but not with a destination, either. He’d left too much of himself behind in places she had touched. And now, he found himself trying to understand the shape of the man he’d become without her.


Sometimes, he thought he saw her...

In a woman laughing on a street corner...

In a stranger’s eyes...

In a dream that faded before morning...


He didn’t chase those moments.

But he felt them.


He carried her words, like prayer beads in his pocket, turning them over again and again.


“This time, if you leave... Let it be without promises.”


He didn’t promise.

But still, he remembered...


They moved through the world separately now, shaped by love that hadn’t lasted, but never truly left...


And somewhere in the quiet ache between them...

A kind of peace began to grow.