Writers 
Let me leave you with this
a sudden Proustian trace.
I may return once in a decade,
or perhaps never
step into your tomorrow again.
You will pass countless strangers,
each carrying an unseen world,
each living a life
you will never know.
Perhaps, in some quiet moment of sonder,
you will stop and wonder
how many remarkable souls
have brushed against your life
only to become gentle echoes.
And then
a passing scent,
a phantom tune,
the warmth of an old afternoon,
and suddenly,
the years unravel.
Without warning,
I will exist again.
Not beside you.
Not in your hands.
Only in that strange country
where memory keeps
what time could not.
Though I may be gone,
I hope the thought of me
lingers like pixie dust
too delicate to hold,
too luminous to deny,
settling softly
into the quiet corners
of your heart.
Not as grief.
Not as longing.
But as the kind of smile
that arrives
before you remember why.
You will pause
not because you were searching for me,
but because memory
found you first.
And for one brief moment,
the distance between then and now
will disappear.
There, somewhere
between sonder and the Proust effect,
you will remember
exactly who I was.
Perhaps only
for a single heartbeat.
But sometimes,
one heartbeat
is enough
to outlive
a lifetime.
