There are moments that time cannot erase.
They aren't scheduled in any calendar, they don't announce themselves with thunder. They simply happen. Brutal. Unexpected. And they break everything. Even the things we thought were solid. Even the promises whispered between two happy silences.
It was a late autumn afternoon. A golden light filtered through the window of our apartment. The sun hesitated between staying a little longer and slipping behind the Parisian rooftops. The world seemed calm, almost suspended in time. But within that apparent peace, something cracked.
I remember Élise standing near the bookshelf. Her back straight, her jaw slightly clenched. She was holding a letter in her hand. Not a love letter. An acceptance letter. An opportunity. A departure. I had never seen her eyes look so uncertain, as if even she didn't quite know what she wanted.
— "I didn't tell you sooner because… I knew you'd react like this," she said, folding the letter slowly.
I hadn't said a word yet. Not one. And already, she was predicting my reaction. As if my pain were routine. As if truly loving someone meant always reacting like that.
I think that's when I raised my voice. Once. Then again.
And she did too. She raised her voice. She, who was usually so gentle, so full of laughter, so elusive at times… stood there like an island. Unreachable.
— "I'm not giving up this opportunity just to stay stuck here with your doubts!"
Her words hit like slaps. She spoke of me like I was a burden. Me, who had always supported her. Me, who had photographed every single one of her poetry readings, who had stayed up at 2 AM listening to her recite lines from Char, from Rimbaud, her eyes glowing. Me, stuck? No. It was her who was leaving. Again.
— "Stuck? You talk about our life as if it were a prison!"
I stepped back. Literally. One step, then another. I didn't want her to see me falter. But my heart—my heart was already collapsing. I no longer knew what I was saying. Only that I didn't want her to leave. Not again. Not like this.
— "You're just looking for an excuse. Like always."
It slipped out. Too loud. Too fast.
She lowered her eyes. She let the letter fall to the floor. I never picked it up. It stayed there, crumpled, a witness to our final hour.
She walked out. She didn't slam the door. It was worse than that. She closed it gently. As if she didn't want to wake something. As if she hoped she might come back.
But she never did.
The silence that followed wasn't ordinary.
It wasn't the silence of a normal disagreement. It was a chasm. An ending. An immediate absence. The walls felt colder. The air, heavier. Even the floorboards creaked differently. Nothing made sense anymore. I stood there in the middle of the living room, unable to move. The letter still at my feet.
I tried to write to her. So many times. Message drafts on my phone, unfinished emails on my laptop. Sentences that always started with "I'm sorry" or "I miss you," but always ended in nothingness.
Camille came by the next day. She found me sitting in the dark, back against the hallway wall.
— "She left?"
I nodded. And for the first time in a long while, I cried in front of someone. Not cinematic tears. No. Silent ones. The kind that come from deep inside.
— "Do you want to talk about it?"
No. Not right away. Because if I talked about it, it would become real. That moment would become undeniable. And I wasn't ready to accept that it had truly happened. That nothing could fix it.
I revisit that scene often. In my mind. In my dreams. Sometimes even in my photographs.
I took a photo that evening, right after she left. A cup of coffee still warm on the table. The golden light had faded into ash-gray. And her scarf—forgotten on the chair. That red scarf. Almost as vivid as the dress she wore the day we met.
I've never edited that picture. It remains untouched, stored in my portfolio, without a title. But in my mind, I call it The Hour That Should Never Have Happened.
Some days, I wonder what would've happened if I had surrendered. If I had said:
"Go. But come back. I'll wait for you."
Maybe she would've cried. Maybe she would've changed her mind. Or maybe not.
But in that precise moment, I couldn't say those words. My pride, my fear, my need to stay in control—those things held me back.
And her? Was she waiting for a hand to reach out? Or was she already far away? With her dreams, her hunger for new places, foreign universities, freedom? Had she already turned the page before I even realized we'd reached the last sentence of our chapter?
Weeks later, I ran into the old bookseller in the neighborhood. He used to talk to me about literature like he was sharing a sacred secret. He saw me walk in, more hollow-eyed than usual. Without a word, he pulled a worn paperback from a shelf and handed it to me.
— "You should read this line," he whispered.
I opened the book. Underlined in red between two dog-eared pages, I read:
"There are hours that exist only to remind us how fragile happiness is."
I don't know why, but I bought the book without reading anything else. Just for that line. Because it said everything. Because it gave me permission to grieve. A little more.
Since then, I live with that hour tattooed in my memory. It doesn't chime on any clock. But it echoes, sometimes, at 5:17 p.m., at 6:43 p.m., at 7:02 p.m… Like an endless resonance.
Every time I feel the chill of an unexpected silence, I relive it.
Every time I hear a voice crack in the street, or a couple arguing over the phone, I freeze.
Every time I see a red scarf, I look away.
We often think pain is loud. But the deepest pain, the one that leaves lasting marks, is usually silent.
That hour—the hour of the argument, of the break, of disillusionment—didn't shatter me all at once. It wore me down, slowly. Like water erodes stone. Like wind carves into cliffs.
And yet, despite the pain, I wouldn't erase it.
Because it's true.
Because it proves I loved.
And that I still love, somewhere, nestled in the hollows of memory.
One day, maybe, I'll write to Élise. Not to go back. Not to rekindle something that has faded. But to say:
"That hour… I've lived it a thousand times. And despite it all, I regret nothing."
But for now, I let it live in that part of me I only open after nightfall. The hour that should never have happened… has become the hour I had to face.
End of chapter – Cliffhanger
And yet, one evening, as I flipped through an old sketchbook, an envelope slipped out between the pages. An envelope I didn't recognize. Closed. Crumpled. With my name written in blue ink.
Her voice seemed to pass through me.
"If you're reading this, it means I found the courage to say what I never managed to put into words…"
I froze.
And for the first time in a long while, my heart beat differently.
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