The Last Light in Venice - On Being an Aromantic Romantic

She often walked by the canal at twilight, when the water stopped pretending to be blue and simply became a mirror. The city, ever the performer, softened in the half-light. The laughter from passing boats echoed through the arches, but she liked best the moments between sounds, the hush that let her hear her own heart.

Once, she had believed that love would arrive like a tide, unstoppable and certain. She used to write letters to no one in particular, addressed only to The One Who Might Understand. She would leave them on her windowsill, imagining the wind might carry them to someone whose soul spoke the same language as hers.

Years passed. The letters yellowed, the ink bled. She learned to walk alone without rushing. Yet every evening, when the sky began to bruise into mauve, she still waited for something unnamed.

One evening, as she sat by the canal, a gondola passed, its lantern flickering gold. The gondolier hummed an old tune that tasted like memory, and for a moment, she felt that familiar pull in her chest. Not longing or recognition, yet a quiet ache.

It struck her then, maybe some hearts were never meant to be caught. Maybe hers was like the city itself: beautiful because it kept sinking yet still shone.

So she smiled at her reflection, whispering to the ripples,
“If love never comes for me, at least I will have lived beautifully waiting for it."

And the water shimmered back, as if to say,
You already are the love you’ve been waiting for.