The Blue Door

I step off the train and walk down rain-blurred streets that were once vibrant with the thrum of students, enticing shops, lively old pubs — now mostly closed down, shuttered up. I was thinner then, shivered more, but the cold is the same biting monster, seeping through my clothes. I keep walking, telling myself it’s just the wind, not a need. Every footfall on the cracked pavement feels like a drumbeat, echoing a life I promised myself I would never return to.

I’m heading for the door.

Still faded blue.

I stand beneath it, looking up at the window. Another rental, cheap curtains half drawn. If I squint through the drizzle, I can almost see the amber glow of a lamp. I imagine you sitting on the edge of the unmade bed, strumming your guitar, striking a chord that hangs in the air, that meditative look on your face. You were always somewhere else — even when you were right in front of me.

The winding mystery of our intimacy — I never did understand it. It was a labyrinth I entered without a map. Intrigued, I kept coming back to explore, drawn like a moth to a candle, not caring if it burned me. Even after that first time, when I wasn’t sure if you really wanted me. I remember the silence afterward, the way the air grew heavy with things left unsaid.

I suppose you must have wanted me in your own way.

But couldn’t you have said it? Just once.

I didn’t want a whisper in the dark.

I wanted you to claim me in the full glare of daylight — not creep behind corners, worrying we’d bump into someone who didn’t approve.

Back then, when I stepped off the train, you used to come to meet me, half-grinning, as if you carried a perpetual secret you were unwilling to share. Watching me from a distance, playing it cool. I could never stop myself running into your arms.

We’d been friends for years before that, when I was with someone else. Long afternoons stretched out with sunlight pouring through the window of your room. You offered shy compliments, showed me your origami objects hanging from the ceiling — paper cranes and birds suspended on invisible threads. If I’d reached out and touched them, they would have torn so easily. Instead, I soaked in your words, entranced by the adoration in your eyes. Now I wonder: were you preparing to enfold me, or was I just another origami piece to be folded to your whim?

When you gave me the necklace with the sparkling blue rose, I knew — or thought I did.

Your eyes, vivid like a bird’s — alive, critical, intelligent. Always a little lost. I was intoxicated by our dreams, by the way you spoke of art and films as the only things that mattered. The way you encouraged my creativity, told me there was a spark, as if naming it made it yours.

Then one evening, when I had finally untangled myself from someone worthwhile, you came knocking at my door. It was raining then too — a rhythmic, relentless downpour.

I let you in.

A few days later, I saw you outside your favourite coffee shop. Unseen by you. I wanted to call out, but the breath stuck in my throat. Wanting shouldn’t feel like restraint.

The next day, you were outside my door again, hanging around the street as if waiting for a permission I’d already learned to give.

Somehow, the weeks passed, and we stumbled into being a couple. A messy, beautiful, devastating we. We couldn’t stop looking at one another.

The time you gave me the blue dress, I climbed the Valentine heart-strewn petal stairs to you, still not knowing what to expect. You lay smiling in the dark, stars in your eyes. You must have wanted me then — why else go to all that trouble? I told myself that counted.

The longing. My body still aches for you, a throbbing muscle of memory.

Settling down — remember how we used to go to the long-gone video store, like regular people choosing our film for the evening? I learned so much about movies from you. I learned too much about life.

I used to cry in my sleep. I could never live up to your expectations, though they were rarely spoken. My body so lovely and young then — though I never could see it.

Too shy to wear a bikini. Too eager to be chosen.

You once said you saw me coming down the other side of the street from your window. Dressed bohemian, wearing a flowery waistcoat. You didn’t recognise me at first. Later, you told me you were attracted to that figure — as if she wasn’t me.

I miss every part.

Or maybe I miss the version of myself who believed that was love.

You said you liked me slim, so I worked the treadmill and exercise bike. I never felt confident enough to get into bed with you without it, as if desire had prerequisites.

One day, the temptation was too strong. I looked you up online, scrolling through endless lists, but never found a trace. In a world where everyone is a digital footprint, you are a ghost I keep summoning through a cracked phone screen. No profile. No photo. You always were so private.

Now I’m standing at your old address like a scavenger. The blue door is just wood and chipped paint. No signal left.

I know you’re no longer here.

I turn away, my reflection catching in the dark glass of the shop next door — the one that used to sell those records we spent hours listening to. Under the harsh streetlamp, the fabric looks thin, the vibrant cerulean bleached by too many washes. The hem is frayed, brushing my damp legs.

I smooth the silk over my hips — the same silk you once unzipped on the petal-strewn stairs. The rain doesn’t just wash it; it weighs it down.

I walk back towards the station.