"Jane"

"JANE"

It always started the same.

The little coffee shop hidden behind the city center's buzz . The one with the red awning and classical piano music that flowed into the streets like spilled wine. I’d sit by the window, alone, like always, scribbling half-finished stories in a notebook too full of beginnings and never enough endings. The bitter scent and warmth of pure black coffee clung to the pages, warming my fingers in ways that kept my hands from remembering they were empty.

It wasn’t sadness I sat with. It was yearning. A quiet feeling with no perfect name, but a familiar ache.

Then she came. The way sunlight filters through fog, soft, golden, unnoticed until you’re basking in its light .

That day, I finished my drink and stood, hands full of books and pens. The bell above the door chimed ready to mark my exit. The air outside smelled of impending rain and pollen dust, nostalgic yet mournful. I pushed the door ready to leave, when suddenly, as if fate decided to play its little games, I bumped into someone.

There was a sound, the tender kind, like a flower’s gasp when it’s caught swaying to a breeze's song, and then two eyes looked into mine. Familiar. In a way that made my ribs ache. In ways that made living feel like a journey just to stare into these orbs.

"I’m sorry," I said, stumbling back a little, trying to breathe.

She tilted her head, confused at the reaction. A gesture as familiar as stepping into a childhood home.

“Have we met before?” I breathlessly asked.

She smiled.

It was all heaven and sin.

Dimples appeared like secrets being told as she raised her hand my way for a shake.

And then she said, "No, we haven’t. But I’m Jane."

Jane.

The name settled somewhere beneath my skin. In places I never knew needed mending. In empty chambers that begged to be made into a home.

We talked.

Outside, leaning against the brick wall beneath the neighboring building's balcony, the sun and birds bore witness. Her laugh was pure and unpracticed, like she didn’t use it often but it remembered how to sound beautiful. Her windswept hair moved across her reddish cheeks, finding comfort in their softness. And when she pushed it behind her ear, oh my breath got caught in some place I didn’t even know existed.

She told me she wrote poetries but never let anyone read them. That her favorite phrase was "What if" and that she always drinks a cup of tea despite not really liking how they taste.

Her spirit animal is an owl and she admires the Greek god Anteros of reciprocated love. She said Cupid is much too idolized by society. She likes the way the world feels right before a thunderstorm, and the sound the rain makes when they fall. She also loves to look up at the moon and stars, despite not being able to see clearly at all because of her glasses.

I told her I liked the way she talked about the world.

"It’s like you’ve been waiting for someone to listen," I said.

"Maybe I have," she whispered, a tender longing in her eyes.

Days passed in the same way dreams do, impossible to hold, impossible to forget. We met every day after that, not by planning, but because the world kept folding itself in a way that brought us back into each other's reach.

She’d wait for me at the coffee shop, sitting where I always had, and I’d watch her from the door, the way the light wrapped around her like an old promise, how the shadows never dared touch her, afraid to be consumed by her glow.

I never asked for her number. I didn’t need to.

We walked. Parks, bookstores, alleyways filled with street art, secret notes scribbled on walls, bridges with locks, and hidden places that sing of peace . Everything felt like a déjà vu, like reading a book I forgot I once wrote.

"Do you ever feel like you’ve already known someone, even if you just met them?" I asked once.

She looked at me, a small crease forming between her brows.

"All the time," she said.

One afternoon, we lay in the grass at the edge of the park where the moss-covered lamppost whispered tales only time really understood. Her fingers played with mine absently, and the sky wore its most poetic shade of blue.

"Do you believe in soulmates?" I asked, admiring her beauty.

She looked at me, her lashes casting shadows across her cheeks and mesmerizing eyes.

"I believe some people are echoes of each other," she said. "Like two different words that rhyme. Different tunes that harmonize."

And there, in that park, where birds bashfully sound their compositions, we kissed, in a way that’s slow, unsure, full of every word we hadn’t said. It was then that I knew I’d been looking for her in every quiet moment of my life.

And then, a moment that doesn't belong in a love story occurred.

It was raining and I was in a hurry, excited to finally introduce her to my family. The road was blurry that day, I remembered.

When suddenly, a panicked shout came from behind me, footsteps pounding close, desperate to reach me, and then, a blinding flash.

Sirens wailed. People gathered around the scene. A distant, painful whine that echoed like a forgotten dream. And suffering.

Pain wasn’t a memory then, it was a feeling.

Then nothing.

_____________

I woke up in a different country.

The air felt strange, lighter somehow. The window framed trees I didn’t recognize, their silhouettes foreign against a sky I couldn’t name. Nothing looked familiar, no smells, no sounds, nothing.

My family told me this place was meant for recovery. A quiet home tucked away in peace, far from whatever I’d lost. For rest, they said. For healing.

They smiled when they mentioned the medications, these so-called miracles meant to bring back the pieces of me that had slipped through the cracks.

But every morning, I opened my eyes and waited to remember who I was.

And every morning, I didn’t.

Still, there was always a feeling, a quiet pull. Like somehow I was leaving behind something I still crave to hold on to, but can’t remember.

Time passed and my days returned to normal. Same routine, different place, same emptiness, and a nagging feeling of missing out on a paradise. It left me feeling baffled, like there are places in my soul and mind that should have been a home but are unoccupied.

Eventually, I traveled a year later. Home. To the same coffee shop with the red awning. To the old streets and older ghosts. Yet something still felt amiss. I never fully got my memories back. And I know many of them, I never will. The damage of the accident runs deeper than I'd like to admit.

Despite being back home, everything felt like looking at a photograph of a place you once lived, recognizable, but out of reach.

I sat there again, in the coffee shop’s corner, the bitter scent and warmth of pure black coffee clung to my clothes, warming me in ways that left me unsatisfied, like I had already held the sun inside my palm and now I’m dying to caress it once more.

My normal days felt emptier. I wasn't satisfied anymore. I crave for something more.

Feeling defeated, I finished my drink and stood, heart full of loss and wonder. The bell rang above the door as I stepped out without looking at my path. And through fate's unexpected schemes, I accidentally bumped into someone.

I heard it. A tender sound, like a flower's gasp.

Then eyes, wide, and shocked, yet impossibly familiar met mine.

She looked at me like I was both a miracle and a wound. Like in one hand I held the knife, and the other, the cure.

I frowned, my heart stammering, constricting, like finally finding its familiar home in someone I can't hold on to. My feelings, a flood I’m trying to manoeuvre despite not knowing how to swim. She feels familiar, like a stranger I can’t help but know, like one of those stories I used to write with a beginning but without an ending.

"Have we met before?" I asked slowly, breathless.

She stepped back, eyes teary, full of longing and unspoken questions. Then, despite it all, she smiled.

Dimples like secrets, touched by scars time had healed.

Like heaven and pure sin.

Like home.

Parks, bookstores, alleyways, secret notes, bridges, it’s all there, not as memories, but feelings. I see no flashes, no images, but I still remember how it all felt deep inside. The tender blushing of cheeks, heart skipping beats, oxygen turning heavy, electricity between hands that's barely touching, and the indescribable ache to hold something so close and yet so far.

The yearning.

Like loving someone I hadn’t met.

Yet.

Or already had.

And there, in that fragile span of time, in a familiar strangers presence, I felt complete. Seen. Found.

Especially when she raised her hand my way for a shake and, with a voice both fragile and whole, whispered.

“I felt the same. Regardless, I’m...

Jane."

"Nice to meet you"