June 19th, two-thousand-thirteen,
The sky too blue, the sun too clean.
A law book borrowed, fineliners bright,
A notebook stained with late-night fight.
I sat on grass that didn’t care
If I became what they prepared.

Angelica spun in sunlight's grace,
Red hair loud in an open space.
Ollie watched with narrowed eyes—
Joy offended him, I realised.
But I was watching someone else.
Someone quieter than myself.

Tom.

Half-lost in thought, half drawing lines,
Margin boxes, broken signs.
He never spoke just to be heard,
He studied silence like a word.
I sat beside him, notebook out,
A calm between our seeds of doubt.

He asked me once,
“Do people ever become who they dream of being?”
And I replied without looking up,
“That’s what becoming is.”

He smiled—small, almost sad.
Like hope remembered what it never had.

Back then they wanted rings and vows,
Ceremony, silence, and compliant brows.
But I was mapping flights and futures,
Filling scholarship forms under fluorescent sutures.
I was leaving.
I had to.
To become more than someone’s daughter in a dress
I never chose.

Tom stayed.
I heard pieces, stories.
His voice buried beneath late nights and old glories.
And then, years later,
Scrolling through strangers and almosts,
There he was—older, maybe lost.

I typed:

Hi. How are you?
I don’t know if you remember… first year uni.

Click.
Send.

And somewhere, quietly,
The past exhaled.