The Past
Despite my best efforts to stay afloat, I found myself drowning again — not in water, but in thought. It comes in waves: silent, patient, and devastating. It pulls me under when I least expect it, tugging me into places I've long tried to forget. I hate it. And yet, I crave it — the ache, the remembrance, the ghost of her laughter echoing against the walls of my mind.
I've tried to bury the pain, but pain has a way of surviving burial. It seeps through the cracks, it breathes, it learns your name. Now it's stitched into every breath I take — a quiet wound that refuses to heal.
The story of you and me refuses to end. It lingers like unfinished music — a melody suspended midair, waiting for its final note. Every morning, I pretend it's over, but truth waits for me in the quiet — patient, merciless, and familiar.
This isn't a new beginning. It's the haunting of an old one — a chapter that ended seven years ago but refuses to stay buried.
When I hated myself the most, she was the one who loved me.
"Ayah," I remember asking, my voice small, almost breaking, "how can you love me when I don't even love myself?"
She smiled — soft, teasing, radiant in that way that disarmed everything dark in me."So you can keep loving me," she said.
I still remember how our laughter filled the room afterward — bright, reckless, fleeting. It danced through the air like sunlight slipping through storm clouds. That sound never left me. It hums through my loneliness like a hymn I don't deserve to sing.
Some miracles aren't sent to stay.They come to change you — to tilt your axis, to leave you softer, humbler, ruined in all the ways that make you human. God lends them to you, then takes them back — not out of cruelty, but mercy.
"Ayah," I whispered her name into the silence, feeling it tremble on my lips. "She was the sweet thirst I could never quench."
I have seen beauty. I've stood beneath chandeliers of gold, played to crowds whose applause roared like thunder. I've held the admiration of strangers and the envy of men.None of it compared to her.
She was serenity born of chaos. Her voice was the sound of peace, her scent the ghost of safety. She was my moonlight when the world turned dark, my dawn when the night refused to end.
Ayah Ferdous wasn't just a woman.She was a prayer in motion — my addiction, my patience, my wisdom, and my faith. She was the soft answer to every question I'd never dared to ask. Even now, I orbit her memory, trapped in her gravity, unable to escape even if I wanted to.
And like all stories of light, it began in darkness.
Seven Years Ago
The air inside my father's office was thick — not with warmth, but with tension. The scent of cigar smoke hung faintly in the corners, mingling with the sterile chill of winter seeping through the glass windows. Outside, snow fell in slow, deliberate spirals. Inside, tempers burned.
My father stood behind his desk, every inch of him composed control — suit pressed, jaw set, voice sharp enough to slice through the silence. Michael lingered near the window, his posture stiff, eyes darting between us like someone watching a storm gather.
"I'm happy where I am," I said, trying to keep my voice calm. "I don't want to compete."
My father's reply cracked through the room like thunder."It's not just about you, Aubrey! Think about the staff, about Michael — about everyone who's built this legacy around you!"
"And why should I care what they want?" I shot back.
"Because you owe it to them!"
That word — owe — detonated something inside me. For years, I had traded everything I loved — my art, my peace, my freedom — for the life he built. The one I never wanted. The one he mistook for love.
He had never once asked what I wanted. Not once.
All I had ever wished for was to hear him say, "Son, do what your heart desires. Even if you fail, I'll stand beside you."
But he didn't.He never did.
Instead, he said the one thing he shouldn't have.
"Alex would be disappointed in you."
The air froze. The world seemed to tilt. Even the lights flickered, as though the room itself flinched.
"You have no right to bring up Alex," I said, my voice low, trembling with a rage too deep for shouting. "He's not your son anymore. Don't you dare say his name."
Michael went pale. My father said nothing — his silence the sharpest weapon he owned.
I turned, grabbed my coat, and walked out before the fury could turn me into something I'd regret.
Outside, the city hit me like ice. The wind was merciless — it clawed at my face, stung my eyes, bit through my coat — but it was honest. The cold didn't lie. It didn't pretend to understand. It just was.
The streets glowed faintly under streetlights, halos of gold in a world of white. My breath rose in shallow clouds, the air crisp with the smell of snow and exhaust and distant bakery ovens.
"I wish it were me who had died, Alex," I muttered. The words left my mouth and vanished into the dark, but the weight of them stayed.
The city was alive in ways I wasn't.
A florist arranged roses behind fogged glass, humming softly to herself.Two children chased snowflakes, mittens damp and laughter bright.A street vendor handed roasted chestnuts to a stranger and smiled like life had never betrayed him.
I watched them all, wondering how people could carry such lightness in a world that takes so much.
And then — I saw her.
She sat on a park bench across the street, a lone figure against the snow-blanketed square. Her orange beanie glowed like a tiny flame against the winter white. Her brown hair spilled in soft waves around her face as she bent over a sketchbook, her pencil gliding across the page with quiet intent.
There was something in her stillness — a kind of faith in the ordinary — that rooted me to the spot. I couldn't look away.
I crossed the street before I could think better of it. The snow whispered underfoot, each step crunching softly in the hush of the world.
"What are you drawing?" I asked, my breath fogging the air between us.
She jumped, clutching her chest. "Oh my God—don't sneak up on people like that!"
I lifted my hands in surrender. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."
She blinked, studying me for a moment, then her lips curved into a reluctant smile. "You want to know?"
I nodded.
She turned the sketchbook toward me. The page was filled with uneven lines, rough shapes that hinted at symmetry. "It's supposed to be a snowflake," she said, half shy, half proud.
"It looks… abstract," I said, and immediately regretted it.
She laughed — light and self-deprecating. "That's a nice way to say it's terrible."
"Have you ever seen a snowflake before?"
"No," she admitted softly. "Not really."
I frowned. "You live in New York. How have you never seen one?"
She shrugged, eyes still on her drawing. "Maybe I was too busy trying to survive to notice the small things."
Something about that hit me like memory — sharp, quiet, familiar.
"May I?" I gestured to her sketchbook.
She hesitated, then handed it to me. I knelt beside the bench. The paper was cold beneath my fingers, and before I could stop myself, my pencil began to move — muscle memory guiding the lines into delicate symmetry.
When I handed it back, she stared at it for a long moment, then whispered, "It's beautiful. I've never seen anyone draw something so fragile."
"Snowflakes are meant to be," I said softly.
She looked up at me then — really looked — and for the first time, I saw the faintest flicker of light in her amber eyes.
"You should be a painter," she said, voice almost reverent. "Your hands… they're gifted."
I smiled, the kind that feels unfamiliar when it's real. "I was."
Her watch beeped suddenly, jolting her. "Oh no — my break's over." She scrambled to gather her things, nearly dropping her bag. Then she looked back, grinning through the cold.
"Thank you… for showing me what I couldn't see."
And then she was gone — the café door swinging shut behind her, warmth swallowing her whole.
I stood there for a long time, watching the window glow from within, her silhouette faintly visible inside.
Snow drifted down, catching on the open sketchbook she'd left on the bench. I brushed the flakes away gently, my fingers lingering on the page.
A hand fell on my shoulder. Michael's voice followed. "What's wrong?"
I turned to him, the city lights blurring behind his outline. "Nothing," I said.
But it wasn't true.
Because for the first time in years, the cold didn't hurt.It soothed.
And for the first time in a very long while,I felt it again — that small, dangerous, beautiful thing.
Hope.