It was February, I was visiting, and the city smelled of sweet olive, damp soil, and sometimes sweat. At sunset the light was as obscene as I'd remembered it, fluorescent oranges and pinks that someone once told me were so bright because of the chemical pollution.
I wasn't unhappy anymore, which made things look and feel different, and made me wonder what it would be to come back more permanently, and who I could be then: if she would be a better version, or at least a version more able to appreciate her time.
I was surprised, because I hadn't really felt like that was true, but hearing her say it made me wonder if it was true: if I had left something behind that I hadn't really realized I had, or if somehow in my absence it had thickened into something more real than what I had lived.
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