Snow, Silence, and a Message

Some invitations are written in sweetness, others in silence.

Beijing had pulled me back fast.

Deadlines, decks, days that bled into nights.

Between meetings and metros,

His name would occasionally light up my screen—never enough to mean something, always just enough to remind me.

And then came the break.

A trip not born of longing, but of exhaustion.

Canada. Snow like silence. Bridges suspended over fog.

I didn’t think of him at first.

Until that vineyard.

The ice wine was golden, delicate, treacherously sweet.

Like a secret that mistook itself for a gift.

Like something we never got to say, now melting on my tongue.

I didn’t plan it.

Didn’t plot a return.

But I found myself writing,

“I brought back something from Canada.

Would you like to try it with me sometime?”

It wasn’t about the wine.

It was about the silence that came before it,

and how it had grown too still to ignore.

No confession.

No expectation.

Just an opening.

A door left slightly ajar,

with a bottle full of snow, memory, and something that refused to stay buried.