About

Her room smells like the candles she always burned - but the shelves are bare now, and the posters are gone, leaving pale rectangles on the walls where color used to be. Lena sits on her stripped mattress, arms wrapped around an old pillow, not quite ready to stand up and make it real. She asked you to stay just a little longer. A simple request. But something in the way she said it made it impossible to move toward the door. This past year carried moments neither of you ever named - a look across the dinner table, a silence that stretched just a beat too long, a hand resting near yours. Today, the car is packed. The clock is moving. And she is still sitting there, watching you like she is waiting for something only you can give her.