Until We Meet Again

I have walked this winding road a thousand times, though I swear it changes its face whenever I return.

Some days it greets me with the quiet of rain-soaked earth, other days with a brittle wind that sounds almost like a voice trying to call me back. I tell myself this is only memory playing tricks but yet memory has always been the wiser of us two.

The path begins at the edge of the fields, where the golden weeds rise like small, stubborn soldiers. Their seed heads bend under the weight of the seasons, yet they refuse to fall completely, holding themselves upright out of sheer habit or quiet defiance. Years ago, this place shone differently. The fields were brighter then, or perhaps my eyes were. We used to race the length of the stream, barefoot, reckless, believing the river existed only to echo our laughter. We dared each other to jump from stones slick with moss, to wade deeper even when the water bit cold around our ankles. Even now, when the water moves over stone, I hear a ghost of those shouts woven into the current, rising and fading like a song the river never finished singing.

I step carefully, as though to avoid disturbing something once held sacred. Maybe I am afraid of breaking whatever thin thread ties the world to its younger self. There is a reverence to the way my feet touch the ground now, a patience I never had before. Back then, the road was something to conquer, to outrun. Now it feels like something to listen to.

There are places along the road where the ground dips slightly, shallow hollows where rain gathers and lingers longer than it should. We once stopped at one of these after a summer storm, watching our reflections tremble in the muddy water. The sky was fractured there, broken into ripples, our faces blurred into shapes we barely recognized. It was strange how the world could look so uncertain and still feel true. I didn’t understand then. I only knew that standing beside you made even uncertainty feel like shelter. Now, when I pass those hollows, I avoid looking too closely. Reflections have a way of telling the truth before we are ready to hear it.

Sometimes I wonder how many versions of myself are layered along this path. One being child who ran without looking back.  Each version thought they understood what mattered. Each was only partially right.

Farther on, the fence appears, older now, space between posts, its wire loosened by years of wind and frost. Rust freckles the metal, and vines have claimed entire sections, threading themselves through gaps as if trying to stitch the fence back together. We used to lean against it, counting clouds and inventing futures as easily as breathing. You swore we’d never forget this place. I laughed and told you forgetting was impossible. I see now how gently wrong we both were. The fence still stands, but the dreams we draped across it have thinned, worn translucent by the effects of time. Still, some fragments cling, fluttering like scraps of old paper, stubborn as the weeds at the field’s edge.

Beyond the fence, the land dips into a shallow valley where the grass grows softer, almost shy. We once lay there long past sunset, watching the sky darken inch by inch. You traced constellations that may or may not have existed, inventing stories for each cluster of stars. I pretended to know them already, unwilling to admit how much I liked listening to you explain the universe as if it were something small enough to hold.

When I reach the bend in the path, the air changes. It always does here. The wind grows quieter, almost reverent, as if it remembers how we once stood hand in hand beneath the swinging trees, making promises with more bravery than wisdom. The branches still sway overhead, though more sparsely now, leaves thinning where they once crowded the sky. The trees have grown older, rougher, but they still bow gently in the same direction, whispering the same low hymn. Time has scoured their bark and dimmed their leaves, but it never managed to erase the feeling that lived here. Some things cling even after they’re gone.

I pause beneath them and close my eyes. The years peel away softly, like old wallpaper slipping from a forgotten room. I hear footsteps that are not mine. I feel the warm brush of a shoulder. I sense the weightless certainty we once carried, the belief that every future was bright if only we walked toward it together.

We talked here once about leaving. About how the world stretched far beyond the curve of this path, how it waited with open hands and untested days. You said goodbye didn’t have to mean loss, that sometimes it was only a pause, a breath between chapters. I believed you because I wanted to. Because standing there, wrapped in green shade and young conviction, it felt impossible that anything could truly end.

I did leave. I followed the road beyond its familiar borders, into cities that hummed with urgency and rooms that never quite felt like home. I collected new habits, new scars, new ways of explaining myself to strangers. Yet no matter how far I traveled, this place remained folded inside me, quiet but insistent. Memory, again, proving itself the wiser companion.

The moment breaks, of course. They always do. But the remnants shimmer long enough to remind me that once, the light found us easily.

Farther up the path rises the small hill, the one that never looked like much. Except when we climbed it. Back then the summit felt like the edge of the world, a quiet kingdom where we were both free. Standing there, the sky seemed impossibly wide, as though it had cracked open to let us see the secret heart of things. We believed such moments were infinite. Youth has a way of lying with the best intentions.

The climb leaves me breathless now. Not only from the incline but from the quiet resistance of my own body, which no longer bends so easily to memory’s demands. My knees protest, my lungs take longer to fill. I stop halfway and look back. The road curves gently away, hiding its beginning, as though it has decided that origins are overrated. Perhaps it’s right. Perhaps what matters is not where we start, but what we carry with us when we keep going.

I think of the things I did not say. The words I saved for later, believing later would always arrive on time. Apologies, confessions, ordinary truths that felt too fragile to speak aloud. They sit with me now, not heavy, but patient, like stones warmed by the sun. I understand, finally, that silence is not always absent. Sometimes it is simply another way of staying.

At the top, the hill greets me with its familiar hush. The wind brushes past like an old acquaintance who doesn’t need to speak to be known. I climbed it again. The hill is smaller than I remember but yet again everything is. The wind still knows my name. The world below spreads out in muted colors: fields dulled by time, orchards half-abandoned, the river threading its silver song through it all. And though the sky has lost that old, relentless brilliance, it still carries a faint glow, like something trying hard to remember how to shine.

This is where I last saw you. Not in body, those years are far behind, but in the shape of a memory so sharp it could almost be touched. You stood where I stand now, eyes lifted as though reading a message written in the shifting light. You told me once that every place holds a trace of its own past, and if we are quiet enough, we can feel the echoes breathe. I never realized then that you were teaching me how to return even after the world had changed.

A long silence drapes itself across the hill. It’s not empty, silence rarely is. Instead, it hums with something low and patient, like a lantern warming before it glows. I let it hold me. I let myself drift with it. And slowly, steadily, a small warmth gathers at the edges of my thoughts.

It is not joy. Not exactly. Nor is it grief. It is something between a soft, half-light feeling that says you are still here, and that is enough.

When the wind shifts again bringing the faint scent of the river and sound of you, I know it’s time to descend. The path down seems gentler than the one up, though that might just be the quiet acceptance that you're gone settling into my bones. At the foot of the hill, the trees sway as though they give a farewell. The world feels larger again. Not in the old, invincible way, but in a quieter, steadier way, as though it is offering space rather than promise. I walk with a new softness, carrying not the weight of what was lost, but the echo of what remains.

And though the stars above may wander through their endless patterns, shifting into shapes I no longer recognize, their light still brushes the earth with the same silver mercy. It falls across the path, across the river, across the worn places we once loved, and across me.

A memory. A blessing. A gentle bow of the past before it settles into its rightful place.

And in that fleeting shimmer, I feel something unbroken stir as though the world, just for a moment, almost remembers how to begin again.