I hold a handwritten letter. There’s a fragrance that comes out of it.

I stand in the street, waiting for the road to clear. There’s a cafe opposite where I stand. The tea there is good or so it was the last time I went there with her. I glance down at the letter. The fading red ink says ‘I love you’ in about fifty sentences. I should have known having received a handwritten letter is a sign of being loved.

There’s a hint of blueness in the sky that reminds me of her. The street is crowded and I look for her face in the crowd—hoping she would emerge like spring emerges as winter dies away. She takes away my winter. I met her after January.

The coffee season was over for us non-coffee drinkers. So, we ordered lemon tea at the cafe. I added sugar as it dissolved in the warm water. “I don’t take sugar,” she had said with a smile. Our eyes collided after every sip of the tea. Our lips stretched after every sentence—her naturally red cheeks beaming with joy.

I remember us smiling a lot that day. I remember her making me smile and putting me at ease. I don’t remember the taste of the tea but I remember the feeling of summer dissolving on me. She passed a casual compliment on the grey shirt that I wore and the watch I bought in 2018. But any compliment coming from me, she had a hard time accepting it.

And then the night came just like any other night. But one peculiar night when the moon was hiding behind the clouds, she said something to me. Something dream-like. In between conversations where I was telling her about Vincent Van Gogh, she paused, looked me in the eye and said, “You talk like a book.”

The cafe became a regular hangout spot after that. Sometimes she wore black, sometimes she carried a water bottle and the other times she carried my happiness. She carried my worries and got me through the day. Our constant yappings on the universe, books and paintings were never-ending. We both didn't know how to end our conversations—we didn’t want to.

But there would be moments of silence when the strong wind would steal our words away. In silence, we let the silence talk. She occasionally put her universe eyes on me and I smiled because her eyes meant security and intimacy. Words were flying all around even when our lips weren’t talking. We waited to catch them. We waited for the right words to land on our lips.

One sunny afternoon, when her lips slowly brushed against mine, I sensed the beating of my heart. The bicycle ride home was dreamy. Flashbacks were intense and the longing was painful. “We just saw each other this afternoon,” she used to respond to my clinginess. I remember splitting myself open for her. When I tore the sugar packet to add to my lemon tea, I tore myself open for her.

I remember the day when she got hold of my notebook. She took it home with her. The next day, she left the notebook on my desk and suddenly we’d written a book together. On my daily rants about life, she had left annotations at the top and the bottom. The black ink of the pen was used to create words that warmed my heart. Just when I thought I couldn’t fall for her anymore. She proved me wrong every time.

The next day, we were under a tree, sitting on lush green grasses. The shade from the tree gave us the breeze we so desperately needed. She was straightforward in asking a stranger to take our picture—our first picture together. I straightened my back and smiled at the camera. When the stranger gave us back the phone, I saw you weren’t looking at the camera, you were looking at me. Your head tilted to the right, a constant smile on your face and your gaze fixed on me, as I smiled at the camera. The image stays in my head.

“I talk like a book?” I asked one day. You let out a gentle laugh and said, “Yes, your words are descriptive, with explanations, vividness and clarity.”

“Thank you,” I had replied. Whereas, what I really wanted to say was, “I will take care of you like how Da Vinci had taken care of the Mona Lisa.”

But I always seemed to struggle to find the right words to tell her. I didn’t know what she wanted to hear. Despite knowing her, I couldn’t know what she needed. Maybe she told me and I failed to understand.

In our lengthy conversations about books, we didn’t know we were writing our own books. Like that one night, seated directly under the butterfly stickers on her wall, we sang to each other our favourite songs. In between, she would look away with a sadness I didn’t understand. I tried to shake the essence of her sadness but I remained defeated each time.

The silence wasn’t something I dreaded. It was the longing and the loud beating of the heart when the distance was too much. One afternoon, seated in a garden restaurant I told her about the ghosts of my past. She listened intently. Sometimes she stared at me, sometimes she stared at her boots—the heavy emotions absorbing her.

After my venting was over, she said nothing but walked over and hugged me. She gripped me tight—like she really meant to hold me—like she really meant to hug my pain away. After reaching home, she wrote something and sent it to me. My eyes welled up as the sentence read, ‘I wish I had met you sooner. I would have saved you from you.’

Conflicts between us felt like conflict with life. Her anger, her desperation to pull away from me felt like someone was trying to pull veins out of my body. But she’d come back, the red ribbon of string theory would bring her back. I recall vividly the emptiness leaving my body when she said, “What are we going to do this Sunday?” In the background, ‘Trouble’ from Ray LaMontagne was playing and when he sang, “I’ve been saved by a woman,” I believed him.

The street has somewhat cleared now and the cafe opposite looks crowded. People there seem to be having coffee and not lemon tea. The sun is scorching—I would prefer an iced lemonade. I glance at the letter again and as the sunshine hits the scared words written on the letter, the longing gets even harder to endure. I kept looking up, hoping she would emerge. A minute goes by and the other. Then, when a large blue truck passed by, I saw her with that mischievous grin.

We wave and she is walking towards me. Suddenly tides of worries and self-awareness left me. I could be myself and not have to force a conversation or have to pretend I am someone else.

“I hate the sun,” she tells me.

“Shall we cool it off with an iced lemonade?” I ask.

“Can we have lemon tea?”

“Sure,” I tell her as we head to the cafe.