Ece Pösteki
There was a time when I waited for her like a ritual. On quiet mornings, the hall smelled faintly of chalk dust, and sunlight, and I would glance over the door expecting her shadow first, her voice next. A few words from her could tilt the day sideways into something lighter, and I leaned on that tilt, letting it carry me. When she stopped arriving like that, the mornings became strange. I hesitated in doorways, the scrape of my shoes on the floor suddenly too loud, every empty seat a question I didn’t know how to answer. Conversations I had rehearsed in my head evaporated before they reached my lips.
Some afternoons, my phone felt like a tether. I scrolled through old messages, paused over her name, imagining a reply that might never come. Sometimes I pictured walking into the library, dropping into a joke we had always shared, stepping back into routines that no longer existed. But even in imagination, it faltered; her laugh sharper than I remembered, my own voice brittle, like thin glass. I would set the phone down, the screen’s glow vanishing and stare through the window at hallways filling with other sounds. The thought of returning felt familiar and alien all at once.
Then small intrusions began. One day, I slid into a table where I knew almost no one. I hesitated mid-laugh, unsure if my voice even belonged here. A laugh answered me, and it carried: light, unmeasured. Later in the library, a note slipped across the table, a joke bouncing between strangers, and I caught myself smiling without thinking of her. Slowly, the little sparks multiplied: an unplanned game after school, a conversation spilling past the bell, fingers brushing the edge of paper with someone else’s hand. The pull of what was gone remained, a quiet tug beneath the surface, but it no longer governed the rhythm of my day. Now, when I pass the benches we used to share, sunlight strikes the wood just so, and I barely glance. I hear fragments of old jokes, echoes that used to sting, and a smile rises unbidden. My phone rests face down, the glow of old messages forgotten. I notice how easily I join a conversation now, how laughter comes without thinking, how my steps in the hall no longer falter. In a book I once tried to read seriously, Virgil writes, “perhaps one day it will please us to remember these things.” Months later, the words settle differently. Perhaps they were always meant for this quiet recognition: that the weight of absence can shape patience, the sting of longing can cultivate resilience, and even moments that once felt unbearable can, in time, reveal a quiet strength I didn’t know I had.