"Not everything lost is meant to be found. Some things are meant to become part of the fire."
~~~
The night after I listened to the tape, I struck a match.
The flame caught with a soft whoomph, an amber bloom in the dark.
I stood before the fireplace, arms heavy with the weight of old sketchbooks.
Volumes of graphite ghosts. Inked grief. Pages that felt more like gravestones than art.
I didn't burn them out of bitterness.
Not to forget her.
But to free her.
To free me.
They had become mausoleums~shrines built by a boy who didn't know how to move on.
I lowered the first book into the fire.
Watched as her face blackened.
Her eyes disappeared first.
Then the curve of her cheek.
Then her name.
Drawing by drawing.
Memory by memory.
I fed them into the flame.
The girl in the sunflower field.
The rooftop stars.
The hospital bed.
The paper heart.
Gone.
Like fog finally giving way to morning.
And as the last book burned, I felt something shift.
Not vanish.
Release.
But not everything burned.
Three pages floated free from the heat like petals resisting gravity.
They landed softly beside me.
Untouched.
Unscorched.
One was blank.
Pristine, waiting.
The second held a sketch ,the attic mirror. The one where I saw every version of myself. The boy. The man. The shadows.
The third… just three words in her unmistakable handwriting:
"Keep this part."
So I did.
I folded the pages gently, carefully.
Placed them inside the black canvas bag the boy had left me on the train platform.
That bag, too, refused to burn.
Maybe some things aren't meant to be destroyed.
Maybe some things carry pieces of us that the fire knows better than to take.
That same night, all the clocks in my apartment stopped.
Every last one.
Phones. Watches. Oven. Wall clock.
They froze at exactly 3:33 a.m.
I stood in the hallway, bathed in moonlight, as silence gathered like an audience.
Still. Total.
Too perfect to be natural.
And then—knocks.
Three.
Slow.
Measured.
My front door.
I opened it with breath held.
No one.
Just the air, cool and indifferent.
And a letter.
Heavy parchment. A wax seal pressed with something that looked like a star unraveling.
I picked it up.
Opened it.
Read:
"You've remembered everything but the truth."
"Meet me where it began."
—E
Where it began?
The attic?
The train station?
The dream room? The park?
Too many beginnings.
Too many endings pretending to be starts.
I closed my eyes.
Listened—really listened, for what she used to call "the quiet behind the noise."
And there it was.
Not a sound, but a memory.
A chair sliding across linoleum.
A girl saying my name for the first time.
Not like it was ordinary.
Like it meant something.
The classroom.
That was where it began.
I went the next day.
The school was long closed. Boarded. Forgotten by the city.
But not by me.
The gates groaned open.
Grass pushed through cracks like forgotten memories forcing their way into the present.
The classroom door hung half off its hinge.
But it was open.
Waiting.
Dust shimmered in the slant of the afternoon light.
Desks askew.
A chair on its side, like someone had left in a hurry and never came back.
And on the chalkboard~
Her handwriting.
Half-erased.
But unmistakable.
"Do you remember the last thing I said to you here?"
I didn't.
Not at first.
The words slipped away the moment I reached for them.
So I walked to the window.
Sat at my old desk.
The one near the edge.
Where I used to stare out during long afternoons, pretending the wind outside was enough to carry me somewhere else.
And in that quiet_
I heard her.
Not outside.
Not supernatural.
Inside.
The echo of her voice, stored in some untouched chamber of my chest:
"Don't forget to be someone when I'm gone."
I bowed my head.
And wept.
Not like a wound reopened,
But like one finally allowed to breathe.
The kind of crying that feels ancient.
Stored in bone.
Too deep for sound.
And when I looked up—
There it was.
On the desk in front of me.
Not a vision.
Not a trick.
A key.
Brass.
Cold to the touch.
The very same from the coffin long ago.
But this time, it had a tag attached.
Faded ink.
A final message:
"One door left."
I walked out of the school as the rain returned.
Soft. Persistent.
The kind of rain that didn't demand attention.
Just offered company.
In my hand: the key.
In my bag: the three pages.
And in my chest,
Not just pain.
But something beneath it.
Like soil turned over.
Something ready.
The world didn't change.
Not really.
The sky was still gray.
The streets still empty.
But for the first time, I didn't feel like a ghost in my own story.
I felt—
Present.
Ready.
Waiting for the door that had waited for me.