You are no longer who you were

and maybe I am different too

because nothing stays still —

not memory

not love

not the soft assumptions we once lived inside.

Once you were home,

not an address

but a texture,

a rhythm

the slow fan stirring summer air,

the familiar hush of rain on worn shutters,

the kind of comfort that never needed explanation.

Now everything feels curated —

a gallery of almosts

where feeling survives only behind glass

labelled fragile

handle carefully.

Sometimes in that in-between light

when the sky forgets its colour

I hear a faint echo of laughter

like a room remembering its former warmth.

You have changed

grown into a language

I cannot read anymore

a poem I once understood

but now have to guess at.

Still

beneath the neatness of acceptance

beneath reason

beneath the theatre of being fine

a small ache lingers

for the version of you

that once existed in the quiet space

between familiarity and faith.

Not because I want to go back

or begin again

but because there was a time

when being with you felt inevitable

like monsoon arriving without being invited

or morning light slipping through curtains.

And though the map has shifted

though the doors are locked

and the rooms renamed

a quiet part of memory still whispers

you were home

or whatever word I had then

for belonging

before I learned

that cities,

like people,

can alter their skyline

without warning.