There are more than twenty journals that hold our bodies in ink — years of heat and hesitation, of cities and separations, of promises whispered and abandoned and whispered again. Each page is a version of me asking why we kept choosing the long way around each other instead of staying.

This is the letter she waited for in rooms he never entered. Not his voice exactly — but the one she needed to hear to finally understand why he kept leaving.

If I could step back into the night you met him, I wouldn’t stop you. This is just as much my journey today as it was your chaos then. My hindsight is earned, but this is what I'd tell you.