we never made it to greece

inspired by linklater’s before trilogy — vienna, paris, and the greece we never reached

i never made it to greece. no white houses, no blue silence. no one fought for me. and i stopped fighting too.

sometimes i think all of it was illusion — vienna, paris, the screens, his voice in my ear saying when will the first version of you come back? and me whispering, you’ll never be the one i need you to be.

we built trains out of longing. vienna happened twice — once in the body, once in the pixels. both times i left half of myself in the space between words.

paris was the ending. a night that folded in on itself. i came home, blocked him, and felt nothing but the air thick with truth.

my grandparents had their own greece. they’re still there, sitting inside the same light, loving each other through the cracks. is it fear? or faith? maybe both.

sometimes i think they stayed so i could learn how to leave.

seven years of silence taught me how to disappear slowly. how to pick up my heart without breaking it again.

and now, when someone says it’s possible — i smile, but my body doesn’t believe them. it remembers the trains, the empty seats, the feeling of almost arriving.

now, i walk through the forest. it’s dark, and the trees reach high into the air. i breathe, afraid but standing. a pale figure approaches — i don’t run. her light fills me for a moment, and then the forest exhales.

it wasn’t horror. it was me, returning.

author’s note

this piece was born out of long conversations about richard linklater’s before trilogy. those films always felt like mirrors — vienna for beginnings, paris for desire, greece for the quiet reckoning of what remains.

while watching before midnight, i kept asking myself: what happens when love stops being a dialogue and becomes an echo? when two people start speaking different languages inside the same silence?

maybe we all have our own trilogy. a city where we fall in love, a city where we try to stay, and a place — real or imagined — where we finally tell the truth.

mine never reached greece. but perhaps that’s the point: some journeys are meant to end before the sun rises.

Photo by James Ohlerking on Unsplash