The Bench By The Sea

By Shaheer

There’s a bench by the sea where I used to sit every Sunday afternoon. It’s not much — just two planks of worn wood and rusting iron legs. The paint peeled off years ago. Seagulls often claim it as their own. But to me, it’s the most sacred place in the world.

I first found it with my grandfather when I was six. We used to walk down to the shoreline, hand in hand, carrying stale bread for the birds and ice cream money in his back pocket. I remember how his voice would rise and fall like waves when he told stories — about pirates and buried treasure, about storms and shipwrecks. He made the sea sound dangerous and beautiful all at once.

After he passed away, I stopped going for a while. Everything about that bench reminded me of him: the way he would tap his cane twice before sitting down, the way he hummed sea shanties under his breath, the way he always seemed to know what I was thinking.

Years passed. I grew older. Life grew louder. School, friends, heartbreaks, deadlines. Somewhere along the way, I forgot about the bench. I forgot about the calm.

Until last November.

I had just lost my job and my apartment in the same week. My relationship of three years ended over coffee, without even a dramatic fight. My phone buzzed constantly, but I didn't answer anyone. I packed a backpack and took the train back to the town I swore I’d never return to — the one I thought I’d outgrown.

The sea smelled the same.

That Sunday, without really knowing why, I walked down the same winding path I hadn’t touched in over a decade. The bench was still there. A little more bent, a little more forgotten — but still standing.

I sat. And I cried.

Not the loud, chest-heaving kind of cry, but the silent one — the kind where tears just fall, like rain off a roof. I didn’t know what I was mourning. Maybe everything. Maybe nothing.

That’s when I heard the voice.

"You okay there?"

I looked up. She had curly red hair, wind-tangled and wild, and freckles like salt across her cheeks. She had a book in one hand and a coffee in the other.

"Yeah," I lied.

She didn’t leave. Instead, she sat on the far end of the bench and opened her book.

We didn’t talk that day. But the next Sunday, she was there again. And the next. Eventually, we started talking. About books. Music. Our lives. The bench became our meeting place — no plans, no texts, just the shared understanding that Sunday at noon, we’d both be there.

Her name was Elise.

She taught art to children and painted waves in her spare time. I told her things I hadn’t told anyone in years — about how lost I felt, how directionless. She never offered advice. Just listened.

One Sunday, I brought two coffees instead of one. She smiled and said, “Progress.”

By spring, we were more than friends. By summer, we were in love.

But life, as always, is never as simple as a story.

Elise got a job offer in Italy — a prestigious residency with a gallery she’d always dreamed of working with. It was everything she’d ever wanted. She hesitated to tell me, but I saw it in her eyes before she said a word.

I told her to go.

She left in September. We promised to keep in touch. We did, for a while. But texts became sparse. Time zones got in the way. Silence grew louder.

Now, I still go to the bench. Alone again, but not empty.

I bring a book. Sometimes coffee. I watch the sea and remember stories my grandfather told me. I remember Elise’s laugh, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear, the way she said my name like it mattered.

The bench taught me something no classroom, no office, no relationship ever did:

That healing doesn’t always look like a solution.

Sometimes, it just looks like a place where you can sit, breathe, and be seen.

People pass by. Seagulls still land. And the sea keeps moving, even when we don’t.