Sometimes, when the sun is low and its rays settle into that soft gold and burnt orange. I sit and wonder if you ever think of me. The thought comes without urgency, almost like a familiar song playing somewhere in the distance. It stays just long enough to be felt, then fades, leaving behind a stillness that feels honest but incomplete.

What returns most clearly is the beginning. It is not fragmented, but it’s so complete it feels untouched by time. I see your hair the first day I saw you, in that dimly lit coach, catching what little light there was as though it had chosen you. You were wearing those blue jeans and those Tommy shoes you liked. It is strange what memory chooses to preserve. Entire years can blur, yet a single moment remains intact, precise in its detail, as though it understood its own importance from the very start.

There is an irony in that memory though. My favourite aunt had asked me to buy her those same shoes, and I never did. Then there you were, wearing them as though the world had arranged something quietly deliberate. It felt, at the time, like a kind of joke, not the cruel kind that wounds, but the kind that unsettles you because it seems to suggest something beyond your understanding. Even now, I cannot fully explain why that detail stayed with me, only that it did.

Anyway, I remember judging you that day. It feels important to admit that plainly. I had already formed an opinion before a single word was exchanged. Perhaps it was the setting, the upper deck of the bus, that aisle seat I had no interest in taking. I remember cursing silently at the people who arranged the seating, irritated by the inconvenience, unaware that the smallest disruptions sometimes carry the largest consequences. Nothing about that day suggested that it would alter the direction of my life.

We spoke. We laughed. The distance between strangers faded with a kind of ease that felt natural rather than constructed. There was no grand moment of realisation or dramatic turning point. It unfolded quietly, like something that had already been set in motion long before either of us noticed it. I often think about that, how the most significant connections rarely announce themselves. They arrive without ceremony and only later do we recognise their weight.

It has taken me this long to write any of this, and even now, the words feel insufficient. Back then, words were all I had. They felt fragile, almost inadequate, compared to what I wanted to express. I told myself that I would wait, that I would become the man I said I would become, and then, perhaps, I would have something more solid to offer. It was a promise, not only to you, but to myself, to growth, to direction, and to something resembling clarity.

Time, of course, does not move in straight lines. It twists and turns, it slows when you want it to move and rushes when you wish it would pause. Becoming is never as clean as we imagine it will be. I set out with certainty, believing that one day I would arrive at a version of myself that felt complete, defined, finished. What I have come to understand is that there is no final version. There is only movement, only adjustment, only the ongoing effort to align who you are with who you believe you can be.

I have changed. In ways that are visible, and in ways that only reveal themselves in quiet moments. I think I have learned patience where I once had urgency. I think I have learned to listen where I once rushed to speak. I think I have learned that strength is often quieter than I imagined it would be. These changes feel real to me, as they are more grounded in experience rather than intention. And still, even now, I recognise something familiar in myself, that same uncertainty, that same sense of being at sea.

I was young then, though I did not fully understand what that meant. Youth carries a kind of confidence that feels like clarity, yet it often rests on incomplete understanding. I moved through those days with conviction, believing that direction would reveal itself through action alone. I accept my responsibility for the things I did and the things I failed to do. I think growth does not erase responsibility, it sharpens it. It allows you to see more clearly what was yours to carry.

At the same time, I can admit something else. I still do not have everything figured out. Even now, a little older, a little more experienced, I still find myself uncertain. The difference is that I no longer see that as failure. It feels more like a condition of being alive. We move forward with partial knowledge, adjusting as we go, learning through experience rather than arriving fully prepared.

When I think of you, it is not with regret, nor with any sense of loss that demands correction. It is something else. I hope you are well. I hope the sunflowers still give you joy, the way they once did. There was something about the way you spoke about them, as though they carried a kind of simple truth about happiness. I hope the water still quiets you, that you still find those moments where everything settles into place and the noise falls away. I hope you still play music from vinyl. I hope you still laugh easily, still move with that quiet confidence, and still sing without hesitation.

Those memories feel intact, untouched by time in a way that surprises me. We sang, we laughed, and those moments remain whole. They do not require reconstruction or reinterpretation. They exist as they were, complete in themselves. I find a certain comfort in that. It suggests that some experiences carry their own permanence, independent of what follows.

I sometimes wonder what you would see if you looked at me now. Whether the man I have become would align in any way with the man I said I would become. That question carries weight, though it does not demand an answer. It sits alongside everything else, part of the same quiet reflection that returns in those evening hours.

I hope you would be proud. Not in a grand sense, not as a measure of achievement, but in a quieter way. Proud of the effort, of the intention, of the attempt to move forward with some degree of honesty. I have come to understand that becoming is less about reaching a destination and more about the direction you choose to move in, even when the path is unclear.

As the sun fades and the light softens, I return to that simple question. Whether you think of me. It remains unanswered, and perhaps it will always remain that way. Yet it no longer feels like something that needs resolution. It exists as part of the larger story, a reflection of connection, of time, of change.

You were part of something that shaped me. That is enough to give the memory its place. It does not require anything more.

And so I sit with it, as the day closes and the evening settles in, allowing the past and present to meet briefly in that quiet space. The question lingers, then gently fades, carried away with the last light of the day.