Before The Bells Forgot Our Names

I heard the church bells begin without us and felt your shoulder pull away from mine as if the sound itself had decided which of us could remain. The door between the nave and the night closed softly and your breath left my skin before I could turn to follow it.

Cold gathered in the stone the way memory gathers in the body. Candles shivered and steadied and the smell of wax and old incense clung to the air. I stood where we had stood together and pressed my fingers into my palm to keep from reaching for you again. Outside the bells counted time with a patience that felt cruel. I did not yet know what had been taken only that it would not be returned.

By the time the final note faded it was already clear that loving you had come too late or too early or at the wrong angle to survive the shape of the world. The grief arrived first without explanation and settled in me like a second pulse.

The church sat on a hill above the river where fog pooled at dusk and lifted slowly at dawn. Its windows were tall and narrow and learned to keep secrets. I had come there for the quiet and found instead the way sound lingers when it has nowhere to go. You appeared to me first in that lingering. Not fully present not absent either but shaped by echoes and patience. When I turned you were leaning against a pillar where the stone held the warmth of the day.

You did not startle me. That surprised us both. You smiled as if you had expected to be recognized and asked if the bells ever stopped. Your voice moved through the space and returned altered softer like it had been filtered through water. I said they forgot sometimes and you nodded as if that were a kindness.

We met in the late afternoons when the light fell slantwise through the windows and dust floated like held breath. You traced the carvings with careful fingers and I followed a step behind. When I asked your name you said it once and the sound refused to settle. I learned it by the way the air changed when you were near and by the way my heart slowed to listen.

At dusk you faded slightly as the first bell called the hour. You watched me then with something like warning. I asked where you went and you said nowhere I could follow without cost. I laughed because it felt like something people say when they want to sound wise. You did not laugh back.

We walked the hill path together and watched the river carry light downstream. The wind lifted your hair and I saw how the world moved through you without resistance. When I brushed your hand the contact held for a breath and then slipped like a missed step. You looked down at our hands as if measuring what was possible and then drew back.

The nights grew longer and the church learned our habits. Candles burned more steadily when you stood nearby. The bells rang softer as if listening. I began to hear you before you arrived in the shift of pressure and the quiet gathering of sound. I spoke less and learned to sit with the unsaid. You watched with relief as if my restraint mattered.

The cost came as a thinning. Sleep lightened and food tasted distant. When friends spoke my name it took effort to answer. The world felt slightly out of phase like a reflection that arrives a moment late. You noticed and asked me to be careful. I promised and did not know how to keep it.

One evening a storm rolled along the river and the church filled with wind. The bells trembled on their ropes and the windows rattled. You stood close enough that the warmth of you pressed against my arm and held. For a moment it felt like the world had agreed to us. Then the bells began again and the sound cut through you leaving a shimmer where you had been.

You told me then that the bells were not only sound. They were a keeping. Each ring gathered what did not belong and guided it where it could rest. You had been caught between that guidance and the pull toward me. Loving me had weight and the bells were patient.

I wanted to argue and instead I listened. The storm passed and the river rose and fell. I felt the truth move into place slowly and painfully. When I asked what would happen if I asked you to stay you shook your head. You said staying would teach the bells my name and then they would begin to count me too.

After that we lingered in the edges. We spoke in half sentences and watched the light change. The church smelled of rain and stone. I learned the way you paused before touching anything as if asking permission. You began to arrive later and leave earlier. Each departure felt like practice.

The final day was bright and ordinary. The river moved clean and quick and the hill held the sun. We sat on the steps and listened to the quiet before evening. When you took my hand it held with a certainty that felt like apology. You told me you were grateful and that gratitude could be another name for goodbye.

Inside the church the candles waited unlit. We stood where the sound gathers and let the silence do its work. When the bells began they sounded different to me as if they had learned something. You stepped back and the air closed the space you left. I felt the pull to follow and did not move.

When the doors opened the night met us separately. You turned once and I saw the shape of you thin into echo. The bells rang on and forgot us both in their own time.

I still walk the hill at dusk. Sometimes the wind carries a sound that feels like my name spoken without demand. I listen and keep walking letting the river take what it will and the bells do what they have always done.