When summer began and new leaves sprouted, I was still here.

The place I have visited time and again since that person died. A centuries-old evergreen rooted over the remains of the departed.

I moved out of habit. The grief, dulled by the passage of time, neither frays nor dries, forcing me to seek traces of you in my daily life. The longing, hardened by time, neither wavers nor vanishes, leading my heavy steps back here repeatedly.

I step forward in the gloom, relying on memory. I can find your place even without light. I can pick out how the young pine tree bearing your name differs from the hundreds of others.

That is why I have no choice but to notice. A woman of fresh green standing under the moonlight filtering through the clouds. Dark eyes that feel exceptionally alien yet strangely familiar.