Tracy.....
She left.
And the world kept turning like it didn't lose anything.
Just one girl gone.
One goodbye I never heard.
One silence I've had to live with every day since.
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I didn't just lose her.
I lost color.
I lost sound.
Even the sky over the city felt duller —
like it, too, missed the way she used to hum when the wind picked up.
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They say time heals everything.
It doesn't.
It just teaches you how to carry pain without screaming.
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I kept writing for a while.
Letters.
Journals.
Little scraps of poems I never signed.
But at some point, the ache turned into ritual.
And ritual turned into memory.
And memory…
well, it started fading too.
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Still, I waited for her.
In my own way.
I waited by not loving anyone else.
I waited by not forgetting how her fingers curled when she laughed.
I waited by living — but never fully —
like a heart beating in half.
---
Years passed.
Four, then five.
I graduated.
Got a job at a gallery.
Talked about light and color and form
when all I ever saw was her outline in everything.
---
I don't think I ever stopped missing her.
I just buried her deeper.
Made her a room in my ribs and told myself I didn't need to visit it.
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But some things come back.
Even if you never call them.
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It was a Tuesday.
Cloudless.
A new exhibit opened —
Middle Eastern textile artists.
Soft fabrics, threadwork prayers, stitched secrets.
---
One piece pulled me in.
Not for the colors.
Not for the beauty.
But for something smaller.
The signature.
L.Hassan.
The name hit me like breathlessness.
Like falling from somewhere I didn't know I'd climbed.
---
I stared at the placard beside it.
My hands trembled.
I read the artist bio twice.
Then again.
And that's when I saw it:
> Returning to the country after several years abroad, Laila Hassan explores memory, separation, and healing through thread and silence.
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She was here.
Now.
After all this time.
And she was talking — not with words, but with fabric and feeling and form.
It felt like a message stitched just for me.
---
I don't remember walking out of the gallery.
I just remember standing under the sky
and whispering her name like a secret I'd almost forgotten how to say.
> "Laila…"
"You came back."
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But I didn't know then
that time isn't generous.
That some stories don't loop forever.
I only knew one thing:
I had to find her.
Even if it broke me again.
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