Take Me Back

 Take Me Back

by Theodora Filis

 

Red wine, deep and luscious, catching the last rays of the golden sun. Figs bursting with honey. Crusty bread, still warm from the oven. The scent of jasmine carried on a sea breeze. We were gods then—young, beautiful, fearless. Or so we believed.

I returned to Spetses after twenty years away, carrying only a faded photograph and a heart that had forgotten how to open.

I came in the off-season, when the island was quiet, the tourists gone, and the evenings turned cold quickly. The taxi boat skimmed across the water like a forgotten promise. No one met me at the dock. No one was supposed to.

The streets hadn't changed. Bougainvillea still tumbled from whitewashed balconies, and the scent of wild herbs from the hills lingered in the breeze—remnants of why the Venetians once called it Isola delle Spezie. Horse-drawn carriages clip-clopped past the old harbor, where fishing boats rocked gently and cats still prowled like royalty. The bakery sold koulouri at dawn, and pine trees leaned in close, whispering like old friends. But I had changed. Grief softens and hardens you at once. It curls around the spine, wraps your voice in gauze.

I walked the familiar path up to the house—our house, once—where the shutters now hung crooked and the iron gate had rusted through. I didn't go inside. I couldn’t. Instead, I wandered to the cliff where we used to sit at sunset, sharing olives and laughter and dreams too big for our bodies.

He died in a city far from here. I never saw his final breath, never kissed his forehead goodbye. We’d lost each other long before the end, swallowed by pride and distance and the things we never said aloud.

But here, under this sky, we had been real. Undeniably real.

One night, the moon rose so full it seemed to shatter the sea. I walked to the beach barefoot, holding a peach in one hand, my shoes in the other. I slipped into the water like a prayer.

The sea remembered me.

It curled around my ankles, then my waist, then pulled me into its silken hush. I floated on my back, eyes fixed on the stars—those same constellations we used to name between kisses. And for a moment, time collapsed. I was twenty again. He was waiting on the shore with wine and wild laughter, his camera dangling from his neck, his hair damp from the sea.

I whispered into the night:
"Take me back. Just for a moment. Take me back to when we were unbroken."

A breeze stirred. Jasmine. Salt. Memory.

The next morning, I found a fig on the windowsill of my rented room—perfect, ripe, and warm from the sun. I never saw who left it. But I took it as a sign. That he had heard me. That Spetses had heard me.

That love, once stitched into a place, never really leaves.

Even if we do.