The bench stayed empty. So, I stopped going. But she didn't leave me.Not really.
She stayed in the fold of every page, in the way I sharpened my pencil before drawing, not because I needed to, but because she used to do the same.
At home, I opened a blank sketchbook. Not the small one I carried to the park. This one was bigger — the kind meant for something that lasts.
On the first page, I drew the bench.
Just the bench. Empty.
Then came the leaves. The sky. The silver ring on her finger — drawn not in full but hinted by a curve.
Page after page, I built her again.
Not perfectly — memory has soft edges — but gently.
She sat quietly in the frames, sometimes looking away, sometimes glancing sideways, never speaking.
It wasn't a love story.
It was a story of noticing. Of two people who shared silence like it was something sacred.
I didn't know what to title it. I left the cover blank.
Maybe one day I'd name it after a moment. Maybe never. Sometimes I sketched what I imagined she was thinking. Sometimes I let the page stay quiet.
One night, I dreamed she saw it. The whole book. She flipped through every page slowly, smiling the kind of smile that didn't reach her eyes.
Then she looked up and whispered,
"You remembered me kindly."
I woke up with tears I couldn't explain. Art doesn't ask if the other person will ever see it.
It just asks,"Was your heart in it?"
And mine was.
Still is.