Η αγάπη δεν πάει ποτέ χαμένη

Translation: love’s never wasted.

Do you remember how we joked about being newly weds to the couple who asked us to take a photo of them by the Old Venetian Port of Chania?

I remember looking over at you as I created this elaborate story on the spot: how we were on our honeymoon, how I’d left my ring back in our room.

As we walked away, you smugly asked, “Have you ever done that before?”

I hadn’t. I looked up at you, giggling, drunk on the feeling of falling for someone. Who wouldn’t? We were spending a summer on a beautiful Greek island, the air smelled of salt and honey, and your dark green eyes held something older than my years. You carried everything and for the first time in 5 years, I let myself be carried.

From then, our days felt lit by Helios, each one stretched into an endless summer I thought would never fade. I often had to pinch myself to be sure I wasn’t dreaming. When winter came, even during the first snow in Athens, I held onto your warmth like a worshipper before an icon, believing the myth could hold.

I could have lived in that moment for eternity.

But even statues carved for myths do not escape the cracks.

Labels slipping away like sand through fingers. You kept running. I kept chasing.

Maybe it was your parents’ ghosts.
Maybe the shadow of the love you lost, the one who would have given you everything if she had not wed her true love…
Maybe it was nothing I could ever hold.

Each word of yours chipped away at me. First my ankles, then the rest of my body. My mind: how foolish I must be. My luck: as if years of hard work meant nothing at all. I told myself this was what ‘growing together’ looked like, what fitting into someone’s life required.

So I shrank, shifted, carved pieces off myself, trying to become someone worth keeping.

And still, there were vivid mosaic moments that I hung onto.

In each city Munich, Vienna, London, Thessaloniki… And each island I crossed by sea, I glanced over and you were there singing, laughing and smiling back at me as we continued onto our next adventure.

No matter which crowded street or dazzling stage I was on, I scanned every face until I found you and in that instant, it was alright.

The last time I saw you was at the corner of Panepistimiou and Vasilissis Sofias where the subway stairs cut down into the earth. I can’t forget my shaky hands, eyes filled with tears as I gave back the chain that had rested against my neck for years: the one that gave me the courage to shine like the stars, and like AG, the Aegean Sea talisman you gave me to hold when you couldn’t.

I stayed, hovering at the threshold, caught between the noise of Athens above and the silence below, waiting for you to turn back like Orpheus for Eurydice.

You did for a moment, and I lost you all the same.

My birthday came, and for the first time, you weren’t there. It felt like mourning the living.

And still, Greece kept you alive.

In the scarf that smells faintly of your cigars.
In the ruins we walked past: broken, like us, but still standing.
In the olive trees, eternal witnesses.
In the street of my new city that carries your name.
You are everywhere, and nowhere.

And yet, slowly, I learned to live with that.

To hold both truths: that you are gone, and that pieces of you remain. It had to happen, a canon event, fated like Delphi’s prophecy.

Through you, I became.

I learned what I wanted.
I learned what I will never diminish for anyone again.

We needed each other for a season but that always comes to an end, like every Greek summer.

Ruins are holy. What falls apart is still remembered, still touched with reverence. Seas return what they swallow. Letting go isn’t the same as losing.

I used to think love that ends is wasted.

But as Olivia Dean wrote in “A Couple of Minutes“:

Love is never wasted when it’s shared

Love is the brief alchemy when two souls become one; a truth that outlives the lovers.

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Author’s note: This piece began as fragments in my journal entries over the last 3 years. The moments I couldn’t forget, things I needed to put somewhere outside of myself. Grateful that this all made me who I am now.

Thank you for reading 💜