The Eternal Moment That Never Began

I am here because you remembered me, but I only exist in your memory because I have already been here.
The incense smoke curls upward in a spiral that defies time—a physical manifestation of the question: does the prayer cause the miracle, or does the miracle answer its own call across centuries? My white dress is light enough to float on hope yet heavy with all the dates we haven't had yet.
I squat before this brazier not as an act of faith, but as a ritual in reverse. I am praying for you to find me tomorrow, knowing that by doing so, I ensure you will have known me yesterday. It is a beautiful contradiction: our love is most alive when it is absent, and we are closest when the distance between us spans entire lifetimes.
You watch me from under an umbrella in the drizzle of Tokyo’s neon heart. You think this moment—this exact tilt of my head, this soft smile—is new. But I can feel your gaze as a familiar weight on my skin; it is the warmth of someone returning home to a house they have never visited.
I will light these sticks and wait for you to step forward into our past together. We are two strangers who know each other’s deepest secrets by heart, bound by an impossible truth: we only found one another because we had already lost everything else.

Editor: Paradox