4 Seasons Dublin -

“You look like someone who forgot how to feel the rain,” he said, not looking up. His voice was a low gravel, like the Liffey at low tide.

December. The city froze hard. The canals iced over. People walked with their heads down, breath pluming like ghosts. Aisling didn't fight it this time. She let the dark come. She wrapped herself in it like a blanket. 4 seasons dublin

She wanted to argue. She wanted to say that sadness isn't a competition, that grief doesn't hoard all the shadows. But the words turned to mist. They walked home in silence, the wind off the Liffey sharp as a blade. That night, he didn’t stay. The next morning, his toothbrush was gone from her bathroom. “You look like someone who forgot how to

The winter had lasted three years, or so it felt to Aisling. Not the calendar winter, but the one she carried inside—a dense, frozen knot that had taken root the day she buried her mother under a sky the colour of wet slate. The city froze hard

Then she saw the old man.

On the shortest day, she walked alone through St. Stephen’s Green. The ducks were gone. The flowers were a memory. But the bare trees were beautiful—their black branches intricate as veins, as neural pathways, as the cracks in the heart that let the light in.