She Was Never Afraid

 

There is a particular hour that belongs to no one.

Not night. Not morning.

A suspended place between the two where the darkness seems endless, yet somewhere beyond the horizon the light is already preparing its entrance.

I've been there.

I know that hour.

The hour when exhaustion becomes a companion and sleep refuses to arrive. When memories drift through open doorways and old houses call your name from places you thought had long since disappeared.

So I walked through the house again.

Every room.

Every hallway.

Every worn armchair, every chipped table, every curtain shifting in a breeze.

I remembered everything.

The conversations.

The silences.

The moments that changed lives without anyone noticing.

I looked for you.

Perhaps you were there once.

Perhaps you stood in one of those rooms while history quietly rearranged itself around us.

But if you were there, I could not see you.

Only shadows remained.

I was wearing the black dress.

The red shoes.

The ones that make people stare.

My hair danced wildly in the ocean wind as it swept across the terraces overlooking the sea. The waves below crashed against the rocks with ancient certainty, unconcerned by human dramas.

The ocean has always known things we do not.

Then (...) The theatre.

A singer stood alone beneath a single spotlight.

Her voice filled the darkness.

Beautiful.

Haunting.

The sort of song that feels less like music and more like a memory trying to return home.

When she finished, I stood and applauded.

A standing ovation.

The lights rose slowly.

That was when I realised there was nobody else there.

Not a single person.

Only me.

Rows upon rows of empty seats stretching into darkness.

The singer smiled.

Then she disappeared stage left.

The lights faded.

And once again, I was alone.

Outside, the city was unfamiliar.

The streets wore different faces.

My favourite shop had vanished, replaced by baskets of strange vegetables I could not name. Women searched through them quietly, wrapped in dark fabrics, their eyes following me as I passed.

Perhaps they recognised me.

Perhaps they didn't.

Either way, I kept walking.

Some journeys are not meant for conversation.

Then I found him.

A tiny puppy sitting beside a broken wall.

No owner.

No collar.

No fear.

Just enormous hopeful eyes staring into the world.

So I picked him up.

He weighed almost nothing.

A small heartbeat against my chest.

And together we continued.

The streets became stranger.

Buildings collapsed into piles of stone and dust.

Windows stared out like empty eye sockets.

Walls leaned against one another, exhausted from holding themselves upright for too many years.

It looked as though the city had survived a war.

Or perhaps a memory of one.

Yet I was never afraid.

Not once.

Because somewhere along the way I had learned a secret.

Ruins are not always signs of endings.

Sometimes they are evidence that something survived.

The walls may fall.

The streets may change.

The audience may disappear.

The people you search for may never appear in the rooms where you expect to find them.

Still, you keep walking.

You carry the small wounded things you find.

You virtually crawl through the wreckage.

You follow the faintest suggestion of dawn.

And eventually, after the longest night imaginable, the sky begins to surrender.

A thin silver line appears at the edge of the world.

Then another.

And another.

The darkness does not leave all at once.

But it leaves.

It always leaves.

And standing among the ruins, with a puppy in my arms and the sea somewhere behind me, I knew exactly what I had always known.

I would be okay.

I always was.