Dijon

I did not notice the exact moment you became unreachable. It was not a single event, not a clean ending I could point to and say, this is where it stopped. It was quieter than that. Messages unsent. Words rehearsed but never delivered. A slow realization that whatever door once existed between us had closed, not with a sound, but with a kind of final stillness.

And yet, longing is stubborn.

It does not disappear just because it is no longer convenient to feel it. It lingers in small, unguarded moments. In the spaces between tasks. In the way my mind wanders back without asking for permission, always choosing you as its destination.

So I find other ways to cope.

I press play.

It always begins with a song you loved. One you once told me about with that unfiltered excitement, your words spilling faster than they could organize themselves. You would talk about everything. The meaning hidden between the lines. The history of the singer. The quiet heartbreak or rebellion that shaped the song into existence. And you would smile, wide and certain, like sharing it with me made it more real.

I did not realize then how carefully I was listening to you.

Now, when the silence feels unbearable, I return to those songs. I let them speak in your place. I follow every note like it might lead me back to the version of you that still exists somewhere in memory. I can almost hear the way you would interrupt the music just to explain something you loved about it, as if the song was not complete without your voice beside it.

None of it used to be mine.

The genres felt distant. The artists unfamiliar. But I stayed, because you stayed. I listened, because you loved them. And somewhere along the way, they stopped feeling foreign. They became something softer. Something tied to you in a way I could not separate anymore.

Now I play them over and over, not because I understand them fully, but because they understand you. And somehow, that feels like enough.

I even made a playlist.

Not casually, not randomly, but with care. As if I were preserving something fragile. Each song placed where it belongs, each one holding a piece of you I am afraid to lose. It sits there quietly, untouched by anyone else, like a small, private archive of what we once were.

It is not just music.

It is the way you smiled when you talked about things you loved. It is the way you made meaning feel important. It is the sound of a version of us that no longer exists anywhere else.

I know I cannot reach you. I know you will never know that I am still here, listening to everything you once shared with me like it still matters. Like you still matter.

But I press play anyway.
And for a few minutes, it feels like you still exist somewhere I can reach.
Until the song ends, and I remember that you don’t.