It wasn’t on any itinerary.
Just a wooden bench under a banyan tree in a quiet corner of a riverside park.
The kind of place you pass without thinking.
Unless someone has just left it.
That morning, the air was thick with stillness.
Not heat. Not silence. Just… stillness.
The kind that holds something just out of reach.
There was an empty cup beside the bench.
A crumpled note tucked into the armrest.
A name carved faintly into the wood.
None of them were mine.
But for a moment, it felt like they could’ve been.
I sat down without planning to.
And stayed longer than I expected.
I didn’t write anything.
I didn’t take anything.
But when I stood up again —
—I felt like someone had handed me a memory I didn’t know I’d lost.
Sometimes, sitting where someone else once was
is all it takes to feel a little less alone.