happy birthday!

dear cycy,

i do not know where to put all the words i have been carrying since i left. they gather quietly, day after day, like letters written but never sent, accumulating in the corners of my mind until even silence begins to feel crowded. and today, of all days, they seem heavier. it is your birthday, and somewhere in the world you are becoming another year older while i sit here wondering whether i am still allowed to think of you this much. it has been months since i ended what we were, months since i convinced myself that leaving was the kinder thing to do, and still, somehow, you remain threaded through the ordinary hours of my life. i find you in songs i did not mean to associate with you. in places i pass without looking. in the small silences between one thought and another. in the strange tenderness that catches me whenever i remember you. there are days when your name arrives in my mind without invitation, gentle and sudden, and i have learned not to ask it to leave. i simply let the memory sit beside me for a while. perhaps that is what time has taught me—that not everything we leave behind has to become something we forget. some people remain, not in our lives, but in the quiet architecture of our thoughts, woven so deeply into us that even ordinary days sometimes carry traces of them. and today, especially, i find myself thinking of you with a softness i cannot quite explain.

i think about you more than i ever admit. not always with sadness, and not always with some grand longing, but simply with the strange familiarity of someone who once occupied so much of my thoughts. i wonder how your days have been. what has made you laugh lately. what little things have changed. whether you still have the same habits, the same expressions, the same way of making certain moments feel lighter without even trying. i wonder what this year will bring you, what kind of person you will become as the months unfold before you. and sometimes, in the quietest moments, i think about how strange it is that someone can become so important to you and then, suddenly, become someone you can no longer casually ask about their day. there is no bitterness in that thought, only a kind of quiet wonder. i am grateful that i knew you at all. grateful that there was a time when your presence was something i could reach for. grateful for every ordinary moment that, without either of us knowing it, would eventually become a memory i would keep returning to.

and perhaps that is why i am so hesitant to send this. because birthdays are supposed to be gentle things, little moments of celebration, and i do not want my words to arrive carrying anything you are not meant to carry. i do not want to interrupt your day or place an expectation in your hands. i only wanted, for once, to let these thoughts exist somewhere outside of me. you mattered to me. you still do, in a way that does not demand anything from you. i can miss someone without asking them to return. i can remember without asking to be remembered. i can care from a distance and still hope that distance remains peaceful. there are things i will probably never say, not because they are untrue, but because sometimes love becomes quieter when you stop asking it to be witnessed. and maybe this is all this message needs to be: a small acknowledgment that, even after all this time, there is still a part of me that thinks of you fondly whenever your name crosses my mind.

so if these words ever reach you, let them arrive gently. let them ask for nothing. let them simply be a small piece of warmth placed into your day. i hope this year is kind to you. i hope life gives you reasons to laugh until your stomach hurts, people who make you feel understood, mornings that feel hopeful, and nights where you can rest without carrying the weight of yesterday. i hope you encounter beautiful things unexpectedly. i hope you find yourself surrounded by people who appreciate the little things about you, the things you might not even realize are worth loving. and i hope you continue becoming someone you are proud to know. i do not know what place i occupy in your memory now, or whether i occupy one at all, and i think i have finally learned that i do not need to know. what matters is that, for a time, i knew you. i cared for you. i got to keep pieces of those days with me. and even now, months later, i still find myself quietly grateful for that.

today is your birthday, and i think that is enough reason for me to let myself say this, even if my hands hesitate over the thought of pressing send. happy birthday, wherever this finds you. i hope the world is gentle with your heart. i hope you are loved loudly and peacefully and without hesitation. i hope there are little moments throughout this year that make you stop and think, i am glad i am here. and if, somewhere along the way, you happen to think of me too, i hope the memory is a gentle one. not heavy. not painful. just warm enough to remind you that once, in some small corner of your life, there was someone who thought you were worth remembering. someone who still hopes you are doing well. someone who, even after all this time, still thinks of you a little more often than she probably should.

esha