Have you ever gone back to the same place you’ve wanted to go back to, but it doesn’t just feel the same anymore?
A conversation you just stopped believing because it’s no longer true.
The feeling.
The person.
When you walk into the sleeping part of a city and there’s nothing but the streetlights painting everything in warm shade of gold, you look around. You see every window closed, curtains rolled down, lights out, voices silenced, everyone’s gone. You see, at the end of the day, you do nothing but replay people’s voices in your head, saying,
You’re not alone.
I’m here.
It’s haunting.
You can only nod when they tell you this. Their eyes fixed, so you nod again, hoping it convinces them until they look away. You just smile because their eyes beg for it. But do you really believe them?
You see, at the end of the day, you’re nothing but alone to your own company, hands playing with the loose change buried in your pocket, maybe looking for your keys, eyes to the pavement painted in someone else’s face you want to forget but can’t forget. You can close your eyes, shake your head, but you’ll always see that one face you don’t wanna remember anymore, but miss at the same time.
The time is 2 A.M, and somehow you forget to look up at the sky to realize that despite the light pollution, you still see a few stars.
But you never bother.
You keep your eyes on the ground. Your hands forever looking for a key. You can’t stop your feet for no reason, because the truth really is, what else they were for? You don’t really know the reasons why, or maybe, just maybe, there should really be no reason at all, and this eats you up when all you wanted was for things to make sense. And to your own loneliness, you can’t help but replay the same vignettes of moments and replay the same voices and dialogues you’re supposed to forget, because maybe, just this once, they’re gonna make sense. They only remind you of this,
You’re not alone.
You remember that smile—that same smile they did that one night.
And you can only wish you’re really not.
Those eyes smile for you, too, and you know it’s only for you. It’s haunting.
It’s not for anyone else, you see, it’s not a smile carelessly thrown to just disappear in that scene. It was careful.
But now when you keep thinking about it—it’s just awful.
You think about these stolen moments in one place, you don’t remember the song blaring on the background, but the noise is always familiar—it’s home. The clatter, bottles clanking, echoing, the gibberish conversations chiming, and faces immersed in that setting only to disappear to everyone else,
but you.
And when you stop walking, when you stop replaying all the make believe, you steal a moment. You light a cigarette it’s too quiet you can hear the burning. This is how you convince yourself. You don’t really need to look around to know you’re alone, you just feel it. There’s no clatter, no conversation. No strangers to play the part. You take a long-long drag on that cigarette you cringe, you see, you’ve gone back to the same place, you carry the same feelings, probably gone back at the same time, only never the same timeline.
But everyone’s gone.
Just a ghost. A smoke.
