The olive tree’s scent is too sharp, too green—like the day he pressed his palm to its leaves and said, *“This is how you remember things.”* I trace the balustrade’s cool marble with my fingertips, though my skin is warm, flushed with the sun’s slow, molten descent. The city below is a mosaic of amber and shadow, its windows blinking like tired eyes. How many times have I stood here, watching the same light bleed across the same skyline? The answer is a number I’ve forgotten, buried under the weight of a thousand other forgettings.
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Join NowThe gown slips against my thighs, its silk whispering secrets only the night knows. I wonder if he ever wore something this soft, if his skin was ever this smooth against the fabric. The memory is a flicker—his laughter, the way it dissolved into the wind when he left. I close my eyes. The air is heavy with the perfume of distant jasmine, or maybe it’s just the way the sun licks the back of my neck, turning my bones to glass.
A sparrow lands on the balustrade, its wings trembling as it pecks at the stone. I watch it, mesmerized by the way it balances on the edge, as if the world could fall away and it would still remain. How many times have I wanted to be that bird, light and unmoored? The thought is a thread, pulling me back to the olive tree. Its branches sway, though there’s no wind. I remember the way he touched it, how his fingers lingered on the bark as if it were skin. *“You’re too still,”* he’d said once, *“like you’re waiting for something to happen.”* I didn’t know then that stillness was a kind of hunger.
The sun dips lower, painting the marble of the balcony in honeyed light. My shadow stretches across the stone, long and fractured, like the parts of me that don’t fit together. I lean against the railing, letting the weight of my body sink into it. The city hums below—cars, voices, the distant wail of a saxophone. It’s a sound that should feel foreign, but it doesn’t. It’s the sound of being alive, of existing in the space between moments. I used to think the skyline was a promise. Now it feels like a question.
The olive tree’s leaves rustle, though there’s no wind. I imagine them as pages, each one a sentence I’ve never finished. My fingers curl into the balustrade, leaving faint imprints in the marble. I think of his hands there, rougher than mine, calloused from work he refused to talk about. *“You don’t have to understand it,”* he’d said, *“just hold on.”* I didn’t know then that holding on was a kind of surrender.
The light is fading now, the city’s edges softening into indigo. My reflection in the glass of the balustrade is a ghost—pale, blurred, almost unrecognizable. I touch my face, my cheekbones sharp beneath my skin. The gown clings to me, a second skin, and I wonder if I’ve ever been this alone. The thought is a stone in my throat, heavy and silent. The sparrow takes flight, its shadow slicing across my chest.
I step back from the railing, my heels clicking against the marble. The sound is sharp, too deliberate. The olive tree’s branches sway again, and I feel the ache of something unfinished, something I’ve carried for so long it’s become a part of me. The city below is still blinking, still humming. I close my eyes, let the warmth of the sun seep into my bones. For a moment, I am not here. I am not me. I am just the light, the shadow, the breath of the wind.
When I open my eyes, the skyline is a question I’ve learned to answer with silence.