In search

snowsnow94
Aug 14, 2025
2 min read

I thought I might be able to find you.

Some strange, nameless impulse pushed me out into the darkness, swirling with evening lights. It was impossibly naive, considering I knew perfectly well: you weren’t here.

But I wanted to convince myself otherwise.

It used to be easier. A small town. All the wanted and unwanted people stewing together in their own broth, like in a cramped little pot. And when you set off on a reckless search, you could be sure the chance of running straight into the person you were looking for was no less than the chance of your right foot landing on each new slab of pavement. The habit of simplicity…

Only now, that everyday habit scratches at me as sharply as a fish bone caught in the throat.

In a big city, that habit has no excuse for itself. It stirs unease, it throbs, it keeps reminding you it’s there. You can’t find your place, and you keep performing a hundred useless actions that lead nowhere — that only create the illusion of soothing your ache.

Because the chance has slid down the slope to absolute zero.

And searching for you in this humming anthill — in which, by the way, you’re not even present — is utterly pointless. Just as pointless as trying to get rid of a fish bone that’s long gone, leaving only a nagging scratch behind.

But still, I keep searching. I keep wandering under the orange glow of streetlamps and the skipping letters of neon signs. I pull my scarf tighter, hide my rough hands deep in my sleeves, and scan the stream of faces flickering past in the dark, hoping to spot something familiar.

And every time I turn a corner, I imagine that somehow — impossibly — we will collide by chance.

I’ll be astonished at such a fantastic coincidence, never admitting that I’d been looking for it on purpose.

And after that… well, that’s a whole other story.