i will search for you in everyone else
“My favorite color is purple”
Today, I’ve learned about someone else’s favorite color. The smile on my face dropped when they said your favorite color. Purple is your favorite color too. It is all yours. I was all yours. Suddenly all I see is purple hues fading on this room's wall. The color seems to lose a bit of its magic, its exclusivity. Is it silly to feel this way? Maybe. But a part of me can’t help but wonder if, like the color dampening from the room, some of what I thought we had has faded too.
The world seemed a little less vibrant today. There’s something undeniably intimate about sharing a favorite color. It’s a small detail, a peek into someone’s inner world, a preference that speaks to a shared taste or perhaps even a shared personality. Did the magic we shared exist only in the confines of our secret world, a world that now feels a tad less only about us?
The midday sun was beating down when I thought I saw you at the bus stop. I didn’t though. I thought it was you. She had this sweater that you stated as your favorite. I know I wished it was you who I saw, but there was a sigh of relief that I sighed knowing that it wasn’t you. I let out a ragged exhale that carried the weight of unspoken words and unresolved feelings. But why? Why did the mere possibility of seeing you send shivers down my spine, not because of excitement but dread?
I wish I’d never find you anywhere.
I don’t know if I want to find you. I don’t know if I want to bump into you while walking around this city that we share. I don’t want to see your face again. I don’t trust myself enough. I don’t know what I’d do if I saw you again. Would I crumble, down on my knees? Would I lash out, fueled by the hurt that still lingers? Or would I summon the strength to simply nod, like a polite stranger acknowledging another, and walk away, carrying the weight of meeting you but not surrendering to it?
The truth is, a part of me still yearns for you. I see glimpses of you everywhere — in the way a stranger smiles, the cadence of someone’s laugh, the momentary touch of someone’s hand on the bus. It’s a brutal game that my mind plays, a persistent search for any fragment of you in a world that seems determined to make me move a step forward — a step away from you.
I will search for you in every person I’ll meet, for the rest of my life, and I hope I will never find you.
