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Work has consumed most of my time lately, and the demands of corporate life leave little room to breathe. Yet in these fleeting pauses, each heartbeat reminds me that I am whole, and in time, all will take shape as it should. M. | September 2025

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The story moves forward, come wander the thread with me a little longer. ************* Part 8 It’s 6:00 a.m. Light is peeking; the world stirs lazily. Your breath rises and falls, calm and slow. I lie awake, wishing I could hold time just to kiss, and keep you a little longer. /// The city moved fast and relentless, yet my days had grown quieter. Work filled the hours, books and writing filled the evenings, and in the middle of it all I often drifted, staring past conversations into some place only I could see. Then there was Sam. His days unfolded among leaning stacks of books, the quiet hum of his computer, the soft lamplight lingering in the afternoon. The space held both his work and his rest without division. He often paused to share lines that stayed with him, words that made him laugh or ache. His voice was calm, steady, without the weight of performance. One late afternoon, we slipped out for coffee, the city moving in its usual restless tide around us. He walked beside me with a quiet ease, not needing to fill the air with words. When he spoke, it was about a book he had just finished, his thoughts tumbling out in a way that made me forget the noise of traffic and footsteps. Light filtered through the trees and caught across his face, softening his features. I thought how easily strangers might turn to look. He seemed unaware. His hand rested loosely around the coffee cup, fingers long and unhurried, as though even in stillness he carried a subtle certainty. His presence lingered without demand, as if it belonged entirely to itself. We talked late into the evenings, sometimes about nothing at all, sometimes about everything. Coffee, novels, work, the quiet strangeness of being alive. There was no garden light, no golden evenings, no enchantment in the air, only the ordinary comfort of being listened to. Its simplicity unsettled me. The days leaned toward him almost naturally. Evenings stretched into hours on the phone, and soon my Fridays ended at his door without me ever deciding they would. When the city pressed too hard, his apartment waited, warm with soft light, carrying the faint scent of books and brewed coffee. It fell into a rhythm, echoes of mornings that had come before. At 6:00 a.m., the day slipped in, his breath rising steady beside me, the warmth of him lingering in the sheets. I would lie awake wishing I could hold time still, just to keep him a little longer. I always left before the day could stretch too far, carrying the trace of him only as far as the drive home. Beneath the comfort, something pulled at me, a world I had not let go, a presence that never loosened its hold. I told myself it was habit, only the shadow of memory. Even then, I could not quiet it. One Saturday, when morning came and he asked if I would stay for breakfast, I found myself saying yes. What was meant to be a single meal became an entire weekend: slow mornings, afternoons heavy with books and music, evenings softened by laughter that came easier than I expected. Rain tapped against the windows, steady and low, as if time itself had chosen to remain indoors with us. The weekend stretched soft and steady, like time had eased its grip. Deep down, I knew he was everything a heart could ask for, kind, steady, endlessly lovable. Yet I also knew we could never be more than what we already were. Something in me remained elsewhere, out of reach, no matter how close I lay beside him. He looked at me as though this was what he had been waiting for all along. When the weekend ended and I drove home, the thought pressed against me: maybe it was time to let go of what haunted me, to move on, to give him the chance he quietly asked for without words. I wanted to believe I could choose the steadiness of him, the comfort of mornings unbroken by leaving. That night, the apartment felt heavier than usual. I moved through the familiar rooms, setting down my bag, slipping off my shoes, and turning off the lights. I sank into the bed, pulling the covers close, letting my body soften against the familiar weight of sheets and pillows. Then I noticed it. A faint flicker of light beneath my bedroom door. My heart skipped a beat. Sitting up, I blinked against the dimness, unsure if I was imagining it. At first I thought it was a passing car, a trick of tired eyes. Still, I reached for the handle. The moment I opened it, the air shifted. I was back in the garden. End of Part 8. Part 7 https://ift.tt/UvdIhiW ©️ M. | September 2025

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I sit with my silence, and it feels like the only luggage I truly carry.

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Before the first sip of coffee, before the world stirs, my thoughts take their seats at my table, breaking the silence with their restless presence. M. | September 2025

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The thread continues. If your heart feels like following, these words are waiting. Thank you for walking with me this far. ******* When the dawn streaks pink across the horizon the frozen tree begins to sprout again soon the flowers will bloom and time moves once more Still, my love dwells and this grief remains /// In this city of restless streets and harbor lights, the days blurred into one another. Mornings rose over the water, the sun spilling fire across the horizon, but even the most breathtaking sunsets could not reach me. I woke, worked, commuted, smiled where I was expected to, and returned each night to an apartment that felt more like a waiting room than a home. My colleagues clapped when I earned a promotion, my friends teased me about my growing collection of books, and my mother said she was proud. I nodded, I laughed, yet it never settled inside me. I went on dates sometimes. Dinners with kind men who told their stories, who walked me home with careful courtesy. For a while, I let myself pretend I could belong. I leaned into someone’s warmth and allowed myself to believe I might start again. But mornings always betrayed me. The light was sharper, colder, reminding me that no touch, no fleeting sweetness could ever compare to the wind stirring the flowers or to his eyes meeting mine beneath that sky where sun and moon once stood together. There were nights I pushed myself out of the apartment, saying yes to invitations I once would have declined. One evening, a close friend gathered a few of us, and I went, if only to quiet the silence waiting at home. The room brimmed with easy chatter, glasses clinking, the hum of familiar stories. And there he was. He did not compete with the noise. Instead, he carried a calmness that softened it. When he spoke, it was about a book he had read long ago, his words measured, deliberate, as if he had turned them over carefully before letting them go. I caught myself listening too closely, drawn not by expectation but by the quiet steadiness he seemed to hold without effort. That was the night I met Sam. And yet, memory still lived everywhere, in fragments. A faint scent of wildflowers on a passing breeze, a wind that stirred the curtains like petals, the soft glow of evening, all of it brushed against me, pulling me backward without mercy. Even the most ordinary nights, with the pale glow of the moon above the city, cut through me with their echo of a world forever beyond me. A rustle of leaves along the pavement, a patch of weeds tucked between the cracks in the sidewalk, a stranger’s laughter, a painting of flowers in a café, or the tug of my scarf in the wind whispered something I could not hold, a reminder that the garden lingered, just out of reach. Sometimes, without meaning to, I drifted. My hands stilled, my smile lingered at nothing. Friends asked what I was thinking. I only laughed softly and shook my head. The truth was simple. I was not here. Not fully. Half of me lived in this city, and the other half remained caught in the garden that refused to fade. Dreams do not wound the heart like this. They are not meant to linger, year after year, refusing to let go. And yet I still dream, sometimes tender, sometimes unbearable, and each time I wake, the ache grows sharper. The garden feels farther away now, as if it has already chosen to close its gates to me. I once believed the story was not finished. That somewhere, the stars or the wind would open a path back. But the years keep passing, and the silence only grows heavier. More and more, I wonder if I have been waiting for something that will never return. And so I keep moving forward, or at least pretending to, carrying only the faint echo of petals, sunlight, and the memory of wind through flowers. A reminder that once, in another world, I belonged. End of Part 7 Part 6 https://ift.tt/X7Fdmvi ©️M. | September 2025

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Work has been taking most of my time, yet some memories still find their way to me, pulling me back into the quiet corners of my mind. I’m not at my best lately, yet I keep trying, holding on as best I can, keeping whatever sanity I have left, intact. M. | September 2025

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The story continues, in the spaces between what is and what was. Read if it calls to you, skip if not. Thank you for keeping me company. ************************* Part 6 As my eyes lulled to sleep, I heard the night sing a wordless song of farewell to the lost love and to the world that I left behind, a strange realm that exists outside of time, where you and I forever lived under the aligned sun and moon, in the sky adorned with dancing stars. /// Mornings came differently now. The light was sharper, colder, as if reminding me that the world I had known in the garden belonged only to memory. I tried to hold onto it, but life pressed in with its routines, its obligations, and its quiet insistence that I move forward. In my darkest hours, I wished for an ending, my own ending, and for the garden to remain sealed in its realm, forever beyond my reach. I moved to a new city, rented a small apartment, and began to write. Words poured out of me like wind through white clouds, pages filled with longing, fragments of laughter, and sunlight. Friends and my mother checked in often, their concern gentle and persistent. They seemed to wonder what had truly happened, why I would sometimes grow distant in the middle of a conversation, as though some part of me had drifted elsewhere. They never knew of the nights I screamed and cried in my sleep, haunted by what I had lost. I could only smile, brush off their questions, and carry on as if nothing had broken inside me. Still, no matter where I went, no matter how far I wandered, I remembered the garden. I remembered the way the wind played with his hair, the quiet sway of the flowers, the golden evening light that had made everything feel almost sacred. Sometimes, I wondered if it had all been real, or if it was a dream that clung too stubbornly to me to let go. When I could no longer hold the longing, I returned. The city felt distant, the world around me muted, as I passed through the familiar gate. The garden stretched before me, pale and quiet, waiting as if it had always known I would come again. I walked slowly among the flowers, my fingers brushing their petals, my heart aching with the sadness that this could be the last time I would see it, and part of me wished it would disappear to end the pain. Inside the mansion, the gallery revealed itself once more. There, among the familiar paintings and photographs, I found new images of him and her, smiling in scenes that could never belong to me, moments of happiness that had unfolded without me. Each frame whispered the truth I had tried so long to resist. A life that had moved on without me. I stepped back toward the gate. With a slow, deliberate motion, I closed it behind me. When I looked back, the garden had vanished, folded into memory as though it had never been there. And yet, I felt it in the quiet pulse of my chest, in the words I would write, in the night that sang its endless song. The garden was gone, but our story, in some fragile and unbroken way, lived on within me. I turned away from where the garden had been, the wind brushing softly against my face, carrying the faintest memory of petals and sunlight. Life waited beyond the mansion, in the city, in the pages I wrote, in the quiet conversations of friends and my mother who still worried for me. And yet, sometimes at night, when the world grows still and the stars align just so, I feel the pulse of that other place. A world outside of time, a world where he and I had once existed, suspended between sun and moon. I do not know if I will return, or if that world will ever open its gates to me again. But I know this. The story we shared is not finished. Somewhere, in the threads of memory, in the quiet breath of the night, it waits. And I wait with it, knowing that some endings are only the beginning of another chapter. End of Part 6 ©️ M. | September 2025 Part 5 https://ift.tt/fGBwXpQ

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You arrive quietly, carrying the faint scent of change. I ask nothing of you but that you meet me as I am. Stay with me, September. Do not rush, do not demand. Let your days unfold with patience, from you, from me, from the world that will not pause for grief or longing. So when I look back, I will see not only what I survived but also the small ways I began again. There will be days when I feel lonely, yet I ask you to linger until I remember the world is not as empty as it seems. Come gently, dear September, carrying only what I can hold. M. | September 2025

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