The Person I Loved in Every Lifetime

Title: The Person I Loved in Every Lifetime

Genre: Romance / Poetic Fiction

Structure: Letter-style fragments across time

Dear You,

I’ve loved you in every lifetime.

I remember us under the sun in ancient Egypt, our fingers stained with pigment as we painted gods into temple walls. You were the quiet apprentice with fire in your eyes. I was the scribe too curious for my own safety. We never kissed. But our hands brushed when we passed the ochre bowl, and the air always crackled between us. You died young, carried off by a fever. I etched your name in my mind, not in the stone.

In Rome, you were a soldier. And I was the daughter of a merchant who traded in spices and secrets. You came to my father’s shop in armor that clinked with every breath. I watched you from behind the curtain. We met by the river one night, the moon turning your helmet into silver. You recited poems like prayers. I wrote you letters in Latin, signed only with a pressed olive leaf. One day, you were gone — marched to a war I had no name for. I never found your grave.

In Kyoto, we ran a teahouse together — two women disguised as cousins, weaving love into rice paper walls and jasmine steam. You tied your hair with red thread; I sewed stories into the hems of your kimonos. We slept side by side, always careful, always close. Once, you brushed my cheek with your lips while I was pretending to sleep. I did not pretend to sleep the next night. They said we were spinsters. We knew better. When the fire came, we ran in opposite directions. I kept the scent of you in my sleeves.

And then—

There was Paris. 1889.

We danced under gaslights and wore sorrow like silk. You painted, I wrote. You smoked cigarettes that you never lit, and I read Rimbaud like scripture. Our love was dizzy, chaotic, beautiful. You called me your Muse; I told you that you were a mirror. We carved our initials into the wooden slats of a café chair in Montmartre. I think it's still there. You fell in love with someone else’s shadow and I let you. In the end, I wrote you one final poem:

"To love you was to die daily. I died gladly."

In 1962, we passed each other in Alabama. You were white. I was not. You looked at me with those same eyes you’ve always had — thundercloud grey, rimmed with unspoken things. I felt the jolt, the recognition, the ache of something unfinished. You looked away. I didn’t blame you. The world was not kind to our kind of love. But I still remember. You wore a blue dress. I smelled rain on you.

And now—

This life.

You were sitting three rows ahead of me on the 8:15 train to Midtown. Your head was tilted toward the window, hair catching light like it always does. I don’t know your name. I never said hello.

But my body knew. The ache was instant. Familiar. It bloomed in my chest like a bell being rung — not from joy, but from memory. A remembering so old, it hurt. The way it always does.

You read a worn copy of The Little Prince. I smiled because of course you did.

I wondered: Are you still a poet? Are you still the kind of person who cries at movies and laughs when no one else is laughing? Do you still draw people with too-big eyes and hearts outside their bodies?

I thought about tapping your shoulder, just lightly. Just once.

I imagined it.

You’d turn. Our eyes would meet. Your storm-grey gaze would settle into me like always. And maybe, just maybe, you'd whisper:

"Oh, it's you again."

But I didn’t.

Because in this lifetime, maybe we were meant to pass.

Maybe some loves are eternal only because they are never fulfilled.

Maybe this is the version where we learn to love without possession.

To recognize the divine in a stranger and still let them walk away.

Still, I write to you.

Always, I write to you.

Dear You, again,

I saw you yesterday. Again.

You were walking out of a bookstore, carrying a bag full of poetry and rain. You had a scarf wrapped too many times around your neck and a tiny coffee stain on your coat. I was across the street. Traffic between us. Time between us.

I whispered your name — not the one you have now, but the one I first knew you by. The oldest one. The truest. The one I carved into the sand before the sea took it.

You didn’t hear me.

You smiled at something on your phone, and then you were gone.

Dear You, always,

If this is the lifetime where we don’t meet — not properly — then I still want to thank you.

Thank you for existing.

Thank you for finding me in every century, in every language.

Thank you for letting me love you — even from afar. Even in silence.

And if by some strange flicker of fate, you are reading this now —

If you feel the strange pull too —

If something inside you says, “Wait, I know this voice” —

Then please: smile.

Even if we don’t speak in this life, let us at least smile across the years.

I’ll find you in the next one.

And maybe then, I’ll say it first:

"Hello. I’ve been looking for you."

Yours,

Across lifetimes,

Me.