To you, who still breathes in this city,
Today, once again, I walked through the same alley I imagined you passing through countless times before. It’s strange—alleys seem to have memories too. Every time I pass them, they remind me of you, of the days your presence made these alleys feel more lively and me less lonely.
As far as I heard, you and I still live in the same city, even in the same neighborhood, beneath the same sky, seeing the same moon and feeling the same sun. Perhaps only a few streets away. Perhaps only a few steps separate us. Yet a silence has fallen between us that is longer than all the roads in the world.
Years have passed since…
I hear about the person you’ve become, and I know how far you’ve come. But I often wonder: Have you truly learned how to live without me? Is your life more beautiful without me in it? Do you love the people around you as deeply as you once said you loved me?
“I love you too much!” I still remember the look in your eyes when you said that—soft, certain, and full of warmth.
Has life changed you so completely that you no longer even remember who I was to you? Confidant.
As for me, I still remember. Not because I want to live in the past, but because some memories are like roots. Even when the tree is cut down, they remain alive beneath the earth.
Many times I told myself not to write this letter. What’s the point of writing to someone who may never read it anyway? But later I realized these letters don’t have to find their way into your hands. Before anything else, they have to save me. They have to save me from all the words I’ve kept inside for years, from the memories I never learned how to let go of, and from the silence I’ve carried for so long.
If you happen to read these letters one day, don’t ask why I stayed silent for so long. Some silences are not born from unwillingness but from distance, helplessness, and circumstances beyond our control.
I don’t know what fate has written for us. Perhaps we are never meant to meet again. Perhaps one day we’ll pass each other without even recognizing one another. Or perhaps life will place us face to face again at the very moment we least expect it.
I’ve chosen to believe in the latter, perhaps.
Perhaps that’s why I decided to pour everything that has remained in my heart over these past years onto pages. Not to complain. Not to blame. Not even to keep the past alive. Only so that, if that day ever comes, you’ll know that all these years, there was someone in this very city, quietly walking every step in the hope of reaching you.
And if that day never comes, if it remains forever out of reach, then at least these letters will bear witness that hope was the last thing to leave my heart.
Until that day, I will keep writing to you.
Yours,
Sonam
