Lukewarm.

My coffee had always been lukewarm, or so I thought. Maybe it was hot once, when it was first poured with gentle hands around the kettle’s neck and perhaps it was me all along, my lukewarm thoughts churning the milk and soiling the sugar.

I neglected the vision of steam migrating over the brim of my chipped mug, finding solitude only in those overgrown fields on nights like these, where the moon couldn't quite find its resting place amongst the freckles of stars embracing the sky, the promise of a new day hovering somewhere on the horizon.

Regret festered in every crevice of those memories, which too, grew lukewarm with the passage of time. Yet they were once fleeting and evergreen before I made art of my life in chalk, greying at the edges, bound to chase away sorrows in the bottom of a poorly made latte.

Nothing lingers like the bitter aftertaste of what-ifs.

But I'd never be eighteen again, sparklers crackling like distant fireworks, gracing us with its fleeting gold cast, sketching stars onto the wet grass beneath our steady feet. She often sat, legs dangling over the cliff’s ledge, swaying perfectly in sync with the ocean as it kissed the earth. Above us the moon still anchored itself, hung like a promise ready to gift the world completion, the quiet ending of another day gone too soon. Rising with prosperity and settling with reassurance, tomorrow would be better we believed, I never learned to truly mean that belief.

"Are you happy, Selene?" Words intended for the girl seated soundly beside me, similar to the moon, always within eye line, always beyond reach, she could never be tethered. Selene lived like the wind, boundless. I laced a fallen daisy between my index and thumb, chipped nails and plastered fingers met the stem first, then my head met the ground. My hair fraying and mingling with the foliage and compost, I wished to be one with it, my only anchor the earth, just like her.

"We finally graduated." Her voice rode the trail of a breeze, a smile threaded through the sound. She pressed a sparkler into my palm, through nimble, frosted fingers. "Do you feel nostalgic yet?"

I let her words linger, then settle, curling into spirals of smoke. The lighthouse's shadow cradled our flame against passing winds, a maternal shelter, protecting our youth, one last time. I never considered my dwindling naïveté, the way it wouldn't forever replenish with the rise and fall of the sun.

My attention settled on the little burst of colour, dissolving softly into nightfall. I watched until the colour faded, fizzling out gradually, giving me time to whisper my goodbyes before depletion. I'd always remember how vividly they burned when we first lit them.

The day we received our art school acceptance letters, when we leapt into each other’s arms, soaking each other’s shoulders with tears of joy. A joy so pure, it could be its own colour palette, and eventually, time turns everything into watercolours, blurring in spite, it softens people's hearts.

That version of us was eternities away now.

"We celebrated with sparklers back then, didn't we?" I spoke finally, my voice soft with fondness, I swallowed the bitter taste of homesickness for a moment I could never return to. "We did." Her eyes never sought mine; instead her hands found the ground, weaving through the blooms that parted to seat her. The coldness in her tone, sharp enough to challenge winter never quite reached me. With Selene, all of my seasons seemed like spring.

She rose to her feet like a stubborn flower budding between concrete, her pursed lips curving into the faintest of smiles. Selene could convince even the harshest cynics that she herself, had hung the moon.

Nightfall seemed to greet her differently, and dawn never truly bid her farewell. With crimson-tinted cheeks and glossy eyes that never faltered, no gallery of mine could ever encapsulate her. She was truly transcendent, not even my canvas could bear the weight of the pencil it took to sketch her. And how could I not envy a woman so similar to myself, yet rendered with so much more detail, her outlines shadowed in oil paint, her pupils traced delicately in ink.

"Yours is burning out." She hummed, holding up a sparkler ablaze. Its flame danced like trees in a typhoon, each stray spark deliberate, every flicker sincere. She handed me a fresh one, pressing her flame to mine, the ember catching in a single breath. I watched as it staggered to life, its heat blooming against my skin. My throat tightening with something I couldn't name.

"Will you relight my flame every time it burns out?" The words tumbled out of my mouth, spilling abruptly onto the damp soil beneath us. I wished to bury them, to plant something beautiful and watch it grow, but Selene was the only person around to hear my whispers along the wind.

My question lingered in the space between us, almost unspoken, simply a folktale of the forest now. Selene tilted her head, her eyes drawing circles around the sparkler as it fizzled, muttering its last words into the abyss. Only then, her gaze found mine, and for a split second, I could've sworn I saw her sparkler flare back to life.

"I won't." She sank beside me, slumped over like a willow tree, her knees tucked under her thighs. "My flame won't last forever either." If only she had known back then, I wasn't talking about the sparkler.

I slipped my own between her pale hands, the touch of winter tinting them blushed. My spark grew between our interlocked fingers; we accepted each other’s touch, though it was cold, brittle and calloused from where paint brushes lay and tears often fell. For a moment, just a moment, the light seemed to grow stronger, as if the glint of our young hearts was enough to keep the fire alive.

Looking back on it now, I wish I held onto that warmth for just a second longer. I suppose it's too late for that now though, isn't it?

"Then i will relight my own flame." I breathed, my voice dwindling into nothingness. "Just for a little while." Selene left my words to marinate, to flavour the air sweetly. "I hope yours stays warm forever." Our final wisp of ember reconnected with the earth once more, a steady stream of smoke curled where the flame had once been, dissolving into the air like a thread pulled loose from the night sky.

I followed the trail until my vision blurred around the edges, hoping I could weave its end and stitch the moment back together. But there was neither end nor beginning, only a constant, always a tomorrow—for me at least.

The girl I had moored in the night would be no more by dusk. She didn't dwindle like a sparkler, or set with the moon. "Selene?" The night had swallowed her whole, without warning. The air where she had been shimmered between heartbeats, like the memory of a firefly, and then there was nothing. Only damp soil and the moon’s cast boxing me into its silhouette.

“Where did you go Selene?” The silence retorted, speaking in volumes far louder than words ever had. In that moment I realised the truth I had been running from all along; I could never predict where she would go, when, why or even how. “Who is Selene.” The forest basically breathed the question, through the rustling of branches and the falling of leaves. Selene existed only between paint and canvas, an ephemeral feeling caught between the flick of my wrist, a second language only my brushstrokes could translate.

But even paint would fade, its colours curdling into silence, its skeleton left to rot. Desperate, I wrenched the zipper of my bag wide, I clawed at it, like a half-wild animal futile to the wrath of the forest. The pages spilled into my hands, sketch after sketch of her, the hours I spent hunched over my easel, spine groaning, while the low murmur of her walkman wove the room tight, she sat, patiently, as if the clock had promised us eternity—vanished.

The paper stared back at me, weightless now. My nails scraping the hard back where graphite ghosts lay, the faint suggestions of lines that refused to hold her shape. But they had once, I swore it. I felt the air thin, my chest embracing itself, tightening, like I would be emptied alongside her.

Did I paint her into existence? A muse simply birthed from my own grief and sorrow, formed in the way lonely people make saviours out of the stars. But I knew Selene, had seen her eyes glaze over with every unspoken emotion, across every season, as though she belonged to something more eternal than the rest of us.

That fact I knew to be certain, I never saw those eyes again, never dared to sketch the outlines of her one last time. Canvases lie stacked in the contours blank or smeared with attempts that could never find completion. I feel her occasionally, in the swirling of lukewarm coffee against my tongue, the bitterness becomes her on nights like these, where the moon can’t quite find its anchor.

Sometimes I convince myself that Selene was just a season, one that struck me in my youth when I still believed that art would keep me buoyant in the world. Other times, I see her in the ridges of my own shadow, I freeze, willing her to fossilise in place, to stay, if only for a while. But she always vanishes in a blink, leaving only the ache of bewilderment behind.

What if I had followed her? Where would I have gone? Would I walk the path of release, only bound by gravity to soil? I’d search in vain for the answer, for, like her, it was a ghost refusing form. So I never went looking, afraid of whose face might sink through my canvas next.

I sip the coffee again, letting the bittersweet ink slide down my throat. There’s a soft hint of something lost in the aftertaste, reminding me that some people only belong to seasons, leaving marks even the passage of time can’t correct. And yet, I still believed that art may hold me buoyant one day, still prayed that my flame would flare for the last time, bright enough to bid me farewell.

Selene.

I hope yours stays warm forever too.