Falling Awake

The city breathes differently after midnight. Not quieter, just more honest. Car horns stop pretending to be impatient and become lonely. Laughter spills out of bars like secrets that were never meant to survive daylight. The air feels thick, as if every memory ever made here is still hanging between the buildings.

That is where I always return. Not by choice. By habit.

I walk those streets in fragments. A blurred neon sign. Sticky pavement under tired shoes. Music leaking through walls in bass-heavy pulses that echo in my chest. There is always a hand near mine. Sometimes it holds me. Sometimes it lets go just long enough for me to notice the absence.

I used to think falling in love felt like losing balance. Now I know it feels more like delayed gravity. Everything seems fine. Even beautiful. Until suddenly it is not.

I wake at three again. The room is dark but my body already knows the time. My heart beats like it has been running. Outside, a couple argues beneath my window. Her voice sharp with pain, his calm in a way that feels cruel. When she says “I hate you,” it lands heavy. I have learned that sometimes those words are just another shape of love, one that hurts too much to name honestly.

Sleep does not come back once it leaves. I move through the apartment quietly, as if my memories might hear me. Coffee helps but only in the way rituals help. Grinding beans. Waiting. Breathing in the bitterness before it turns sweet. It reminds me that I am awake. That this is real. That the street exists whether or not I dream it.

Every night, the memory changes slightly. Same bar, different corner. Same face, different expression. His smile always arrives before his touch. Fingers brushing mine like an accident that keeps happening. I replay it without permission. The way he listened. Or pretended to. The way my body leaned toward him before my mind could object.

Morning always feels like a betrayal. Dreams like that should leave something behind. Proof. Instead, they take more each time. I try to protect myself. Books before bed. Calming scents. Fresh sheets in different colors, as if fabric can reset a heart. Nothing works. Because I know where he is. And I know who lies beside him.

The next night, something shifts.

The city is sharper. The lights less forgiving. I am there again, but this time I am not inside the moment. I am watching it. Watching him. Watching her. She moves like confidence borrowed from wine. Her laugh rises easily. He looks at her the way he once looked at me, as if the rest of the room has gone quiet.

Understanding hurts more than ignorance ever did.

I see the small things now. The hand at her lower back. The shared glass. The way their fingers find each other without searching. I recognize the moment she falls. It is the same moment I did. That soft surrender disguised as excitement.

When I wake at three, I do not make coffee. I do not reach for comfort. I sit with the truth. That night mattered. But it did not belong only to me. Neither did he.

There is relief in clarity, even when it stings.

Tonight, I dress carefully. Not for him. For the version of myself I forgot while chasing something uncertain. I walk the same street sober. I stand where I once lost myself and finally notice everything I missed. The rhythm of the city. The strength in my own stillness.

I hold my own hand.

I am no longer falling forward into someone else. I am falling inward. Into understanding. Into myself. And for the first time, it feels like landing.