The Word He Chose for Me

Daily writing prompt

What is one word that describes you?

I’ve never been able to describe myself in just one word. Maybe because I am too many things at once. Or maybe because I don’t see myself the way others do. The way I feel changes depending on the circumstances in my life, and often these circumstances involve family and those I hold dear. My feelings also shift depending on the things that weigh heavily on my mind. They could be anything—the weather, financial challenges, the news, or health issues. Some days, I am quiet and contemplative. Other days, I am restless with anxiety, burning with the need to create, to write, or to complete whatever in my to-do list. How could I ever reduce myself to a single word?

As an INFJ, I am made of many layers, each one revealing itself to different people in different ways. To some, I am reserved and intense. To others, I am something else entirely. I exist in fragments—never fully visible all at once. Perhaps that’s why I struggle to define myself. I am never just one thing.

So I asked him.

One word that describes me without hesitation. I want him to tell me the first thing that comes to mind when he thinks of me.

The room is quiet. The late afternoon light is slipping through the curtains and spilling across the floorboards. It illuminates the dust dancing in the air. The breeze blows the curtain gently, playing with the edge, lifting it, and letting it fall. It cools down my skin where the sweat still clings. His chest rises and falls under my cheek. The sheets lie twisted. Half are on the floor, while the remaining ones are still clinging to us.

I don’t know why I ask, but the question comes out before I can stop them.

“Tell me. One word only. What’s one word to describe me?”

He pauses for a second. “Unforgettable.”

I didn’t expect that. I don’t move or look up. I let it sink into me before curiosity bubbles up.

“Why?”

“Because once someone knows you, they can’t go back to a time before you.”

The curtain lifts again. The breeze is brushing over us. His hand moves to my back, caressing. The light is fading now. I close my eyes and press my cheek closer to his heart.

Unforgettable.

It caught me off guard because I had never thought of myself that way. I had never thought that I could leave an impression on someone so deeply that the idea of me could never be erased. It made me wonder how much of myself I have left behind—in the places I’ve been, in the people I’ve met and loved. It made me question if I truly see my worth and accept and love myself as I truly am.

We all go through many things in life that alter our perceptions of ourselves. And our brains have ‘negativity bias,’ where they are wired to process negative information more intensely than positive ones. So it is safe to say we internalized unflattering things about ourselves, including lies, more than our good qualities.

And maybe other people see us differently than how we perceive ourselves. And maybe that’s the tragedy of it—we spend our lives searching for the words to best describe ourselves when all along we are already leaving our impact in ways we don’t even realize.

Unforgettable is not a word I would have chosen for myself. But maybe he is right after all.

Fragments of Obsession III

Obsession is not just in longing; it’s also loving him in fragments. Here’s a series of short fragmented thoughts about him—scattered images, sensations, memories, desires. They are pieces of my obsession.

Part one – Fragments of Obsession | Part two – Fragments of Obsession 2

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His hair gently brushing his forehead, blown by the fan as he sleeps on our bed.
Him standing on the kitchen sink washing the dishes after dinner. The slope of his bare shoulders, the muscles on his back, the scratches I made, naked except for his dark boxers.
The way he hums as he unloads the laundry.
He sits on the couch, shirtless, scrolling through the reels, smirking, chuckling depending on what he watches.
His prolonged silence after I uttered some cutting remarks.
The way my eyes drift lower, tracing the shift of fabric, wondering what lies beneath.
As he passes me on the way to the bathroom, I reach out, my fingers grazing over him in a teasing touch.
The curve of his shoulder in the half-light when we took a nap in the afternoon.
The way he stares at me, intense and serious, before he smiles.
The way his voice cracks when he’s tired, rough and tender at the edges.
The smell of earth and salt on his skin after rain.
As he shifts in his sleep, the fabric rides up, revealing just enough to make my breath catch.
The smell of his skin after a shower.
His hands, always his hands, calloused and tender, mapping my body in the late afternoon while the curtain gently blew by the breeze.
His gentle snores, and sometimes he snorted while sleeping. Depending on how tired I am, it either amuses me or annoys me.
The way he looks at me when he thinks I am not watching.
I gently kiss his scars on his arms and chest.
The taste of his lips.
The heat of his body against mine. The weight of his arm across my waist while spooning.
The sound of his key in the door. I could hear it jangle as he exited the lift.
The shadow of his stubble in the morning.
The sound of his footsteps faded down the hall.
The way he holds my legs and rests them on his shoulders, his breath mingling with mine as we dissolve into one another.
The way his mouth finds me, his tongue teasing, drawing a gasp from my lips.
The way he looks at the ocean and squeezes my hand gently.
The way his eyes turn dark after a desperate “I love you” right before he shatters.
The way he says “look at me” right before I unravel.
The way he moves through a room.
His pain and grief over the people he couldn’t save.
The emptiness he leaves behind, a hollow I carry with me, a shape I can’t stop trying to fill.

Fragments of Obsession II

Obsession doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes, it exists in the way his fingers grasp my arm and let go too slowly, or in the way I watch him without speaking. It’s in the moments I don’t say aloud. The glances stolen across a dinner table, or the scent of his cologne in a silent car ride home. I don’t need to explain this love. I only need to describe it—as it exists in my memory, in my body, in every small, quiet way it consumes me.

Part one – Fragments of Obsession

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I didn’t like the things he said to me, so I retorted. He stared at me, raised his cup to his lips, and kept eating. We continued to eat amidst the clinks of cutlery and conversations around us. We finished our food, got up from our chairs, paid for it, and left. The air was balmy as we walked to the car. Nothing moved, not even a leaf. He switched the ignition; I reached for the AC, and seconds later, the radio. The DJ chattered on about a celebrity’s antics that I had no interest in, but I listened intently. When the ad came on, I kept listening. It was a promotion for a new fragrance. I thought about my almost empty perfume bottle at home. I glanced his way, taking a quick look at his jaw, hair, nose, lips, and eyes. Especially his eyes. He navigated the traffic cautiously, signaled before switching lanes, and braked when he needed to stop. The DJ continued to talk, the AC continued to hum—diffusing the heat between us.

It was late evening. The sky was deep navy, and the moon peeked gently over the clouds. I didn’t expect to see the stars, but a few dotted the sky. We had been sitting on the park bench right after leaving the cafe. We were in no rush to go home, though it was getting late. He wanted to walk me home, and I said okay. Trees lined the street. Their branches swaying softly in the breeze. Suddenly I misstepped slightly on the uneven sidewalk and stumbled. His hand darted out to steady me. His fingers wrapped around my arm, and he asked if I was okay. His grasp was firm, and after ensuring I was alright, his grip loosened but lingered slightly longer than necessary. I didn’t say anything but continued to walk, secretly hoping I would stumble again.

I love him so intensely that it aches. My heart clenches at the mere thought of him—and I think of him constantly. Never in my life have I experienced such overwhelming love for someone. Never did I believe such a love was possible. I don’t even know how to put my feelings for him into words, but I’m trying. Maybe not by proclaiming to the world how much he means to me or delving into philosophical debates about the nature of our love. My own thoughts feel jumbled and incoherent, so why bother explaining them to anyone else? Instead, why not simply describe the love itself? Describe the actions, the moments, and the way it unfolds in my memory?

He rarely talks about his work. I know he analyzes criminal behavior and patterns, making critical decisions based on his findings. I know he works long hours and is often gone for days at a time. He spares me the details, and I never ask. Not because I don’t care, but because I don’t want to be the one to remind him of the darkness he faces. Still, I can’t help but imagine it.

On the days he is with me, I see his eyes—the shadows lurking in their depths that he tries to hide. Sometimes, he stares into the distance, to a place I will never reach. I hear his quiet sighs. And at night, when we sleep, I feel his muscles tense as he thrashes in his dreams. On nights like these, I gently grasp his wrist and call his name, coaxing him back to me. His forehead and brows are damp with sweat, soaking his pillow. He wakes, startled, before his eyes focus and relief washes over him. On nights like these, I hold him in my arms, rocking him like a frightened child. He clings to me without a word, and we stay like that until we fall asleep. On nights like these, I pray—shamelessly, desperately—for God to pull him from the abyss, from demons I can neither see nor fight.

Fragmented Story | First Date

This piece captures the meaningful moments of a young narrator, an 18-year-old girl, as she deals with the unexpected shift in her reality. The clipped sentences show her youthful hesitancy. There is no over-explanation, only feeling—raw and unfiltered—told in a voice still learning how to express the depth of its own desire.

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At first he was just another presence in the background, like a page in a book that I kept flipping back to without knowing why. He was handsome, though I had never given it much thought. Until one day the words slipped out before I could stop them.

I hadn’t expected it to become anything more. But my friend decided otherwise. She took my offhand comment and made sure it reached him.

Days passed before I learned what she had done. It was a casual mention, out of my silent observation, but now it had become something larger. But much to my relief, nothing came of it. No reaction. No acknowledgment. Life moved on, and that one blunder faded into the stream of ordinary days.

Then one afternoon, everything completely changed.

The bus ride home was a blur of exhaustion. The lull of the engine hummed in the background. My thoughts drifted aimlessly as the scenery flickered past the window. And then, he was there.

The bus was pretty empty, with plenty of free seats, but he walked up to where I was sitting and took the seat next to mine. For a second I froze, my breath catching in my throat. The entire world had shifted on its axis.

I risked a glance in his direction. He had a black jacket on top of a navy blue t-shirt, dark trousers, and brown shoes. His short, straight black hair framed his face. His hands were tucked into his pockets.

The silence stretched between us, saved for the sounds of late afternoon traffic and the occasional ring of the bell.

And then, a simple invitation.

I wasn’t prepared for it or expecting it, but the answer left my lips before doubt could take hold. And with that, the path was set. The bus rattled forward as if nothing had changed. But everything had.

When we arrived at our stop, he met my gaze. Then he turned towards the street. Without hesitation, I followed.

We walked side by side in silence. The long shadows of the streetlights lay on the pavement, and the faint chatter of office workers rushing home floated in the air. Once we reached the door, he stepped ahead and held it open for me. His hands rested lightly against the frame.

I stepped inside. The warmth of the cafe wrapped around us. For a moment, I wasn’t able to even look at him. A flurry of emotions brewed in my chest; my heart pounded. But when I finally looked up, there he was, a slight smile on his lips.

And in that moment, I felt it. A soft, trembling hope for something I didn’t know if I was ready for, but I couldn’t help wanting it anyway.

Related story: First Sight

Fragments of Obsession

What began as a single moment never really left me. It lives in fragments of touch, of distance, of memory, and of time.

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There are days he couldn’t come to me. He is always needed wherever he is. He analyzes patterns, behaviors, minds. But does anyone truly know him? On the days he is with me—the late evening light reflected on his disheveled hair. The contour of his tired shoulders. His long, calloused fingers. His moans echo in the shadows.

The light around him softened his expression into something tender. One hand held a book, the other blindly traced the tabletop. I paused mid-sentence, staring. His brows furrowed, his gentle eyes on the page. At that moment, my heart found shelter after endless wandering. He sensed my gaze and glanced up. Our eyes met—just for a moment—before he shifted away.

This is one of the nights when the apartment feels damp and cold. Thoughts ran through my mind while washing dishes, doing the laundry, and folding our clothes. Is he tailing someone right at this moment? Has he eaten? I tried listening to the audiobook, but nothing felt right. This book is too wordy. That one has a flat narrator’s tone. I closed the app and scrolled through YouTube to find a playlist to match my mood. In this playlist, the songs are too catchy. The other playlist is too sappy. I disconnected my earbuds and put my phone away. Even with all the lights on, the room feels darker. How many hours before tomorrow comes?

His hands are a map of everything I cherished. His light tan hands have carried pain and tenderness in equal measure. They have wielded weapons, sifted through crime evidence, cuffed wrists, and tenderly stroked the deepest part of me. His fingers are long and tapered; half moons peeked on his trimmed nails. Sometimes I noticed faint traces of blood and grime. When they brush against my skin, it’s like the first ray of sunlight after a long, cold night. His hands have built and mended, held and released. They’ve cupped my face, traced my curves, and held me in place. They’ve wiped away my tears and made obscene gestures in moments of anger or to stir my laughter. When I think of his hands, I’m reminded of the roots of the ancient trees or the ocean with their endless ebb and flow pulled by the moon.

The bed now is just a bed. The sheets are now crumpled into hollows that hold the shape of him. I run my fingers over the fabric and the pillows. They still smell faintly of his skin and the faint, sharp tang of his cologne. I press my face into it, trying to hold onto what’s left, but the scent is already fading. The white walls have absorbed the echo of his voice. The door clicked shut with a finality and stays closed until he returns. On the table, his cup sits lonely with the faint imprint of his lips. I leave it there to become a relic of our morning. His jacket hangs on the back of the chair, slouched in a way that feels so like him, as if it might come alive and shrug itself back into motion. The room has exhaled. It has moved on and is settling into the rhythm of my day, one that doesn’t include him.

Fragmented Story | First Sight

Some moments will never leave you. They creep into the silent corners of your memory and wait. It’s not love, but something more delicate and mysterious. I was eighteen when I first saw him. He wasn’t looking at me or even aware I existed. But then something changed. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that moment would stick with me, embedded into the fabric of my life and reappearing when I least anticipated. This is the fragmented story of an obsession that began before I had the words for it.

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I was eighteen the first time I saw him. I was too young to fully comprehend how a single moment could change the course of time, but I was old enough to sense how important it was. He was twenty-two, though I didn’t know it then. The light that late afternoon was soft and turned everything golden. It fell through the leaves as I walked home from class. A heavy bag hung across my shoulder, the monotonous rhythm of my day fading into the background.

Then I saw him.

He stood in the distance, partially obscured by the trees. There was something arresting about him that made him seem out of place in the moment. His jacket drew my attention right away. It was a deep brown, worn suede. The rich color seemed to absorb the light, making him stand out against the colors around him. His white trousers seemed an afterthought, subtle and plain. It was the type of look you don’t think about until later, when it won’t leave your mind.

I recall that he had a camera in his hand. He was working it with his fingers as he turned it in his hands. His dark, straight hair fell just above his brow, softening the harshness of his face. Serious. Intense. His posture was nonchalant as if he didn’t care that the world might be watching.

But I was watching.

I didn’t intend or want to be there, but there I was, fixed in place. “Who is that?” I asked my friend, and the question came out before I could rethink it. She chuckled as if it were clear, then mumbled his name with a mocking grin. “You should go talk to him.”

I didn’t or couldn’t. It wasn’t just insecurity; there was something else. It seemed like he was untouchable, and whatever he was focusing on in silence was not meant to be disrupted. So I walked away, thinking I’d left the moment behind.

But the image of him stayed with me for days or weeks. It kept going through my mind: him standing alone, with the trees casting a shadow as light gathering around him. I’d find myself wondering what he was thinking about as he carefully held that camera in his hands. It drove me crazy that someone I had never talked to could occupy a corner in my head.

Even now, decades later, I find myself going back to that day. It wasn’t love then. It was something more fragile. It was like an obsession that nestles deep in your chest and stays there, waiting for reasons you don’t yet comprehend.

Fragmented Story | Being In the Same Room Again

I wrote this introspective piece to capture unresolved emotions, the passage of time, and the delicate dance between nostalgia and moving forward. It’s about past love that is neither fully rekindled nor entirely lost. It’s fragmented because there is no backstory. It’s intentional because the absence of a backstory forces the reader to feel rather than just understand. However, it is related to another story I wrote previously – After All These Years.

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The rain kept pouring, turning everything into a soft blend of grays and greens, like a painting that had come to life. It reflected the fog in my mind, the doubt that had brought me here. I didn’t want to go back at all. What was waiting for me when I got back to the city? Plenty of bills were sitting on the kitchen counter, ready for me to pick them up. There were tax notices in each envelope, and they kept coming on time. Of course, I was constantly getting glossy brochures from real estate agents advertising different homes for rent or sale, as if they could give me the security I really craved. They claimed that property was the foundation of our modern life. Have we forgotten what it means to belong in our quest for a place to call home?

The town was so different from the hectic pace of daily life that it felt like a different world. You could feel like time was moving slower here. When I walked into that little bookshop with its worn shelves and familiar atmosphere, it stirred up something deeper inside me. Not only did the past resurface again, but it also brought up something that hadn’t been resolved. Why does that feeling persist even after years of being apart? That question hung in the air.

Was it a spark that was about to go off again, or was it just the light of ashes from the past? To bring back an old love, you have to dig up what was hidden and accept both the joy and the pain that come with it. But could it be something else—a chance to put things to rest? Is it finally possible to break free from the maze of what-ifs and let the past rest?

There was also the issue of trust. Did it still matter that you understood instead of being validated after all this time? And even if it did, would that be enough to begin a new relationship? Maybe not love, but friendship for sure. We could have maintained a bright shared past, unaffected by the decisions we’ve made along the way.

I’ve learned that desire and lasting devotion aren’t the only things that define love. It was about the possibilities, the countless ways it could evolve, even after it had already slipped away from you once. With the sound of rain on the windows and the faint smell of books in the air, I stayed in that space and thought about whether love might just be being in the same room again after all this time and finding peace between us.

Fragmented Story | After All These Years

Some things are never fully lost. They stay in pieces, in corners of the mind, surfacing as the scent of rain, the pages of an old book, or a place you never intended to return to.

This fragmented story, After All These Years, reflects on such moments—small towns and bookstores, old love, and the what-ifs that never fade away. Nostalgic, like turning through an old book and discovering a dried flower between its pages. A memory of something once vibrant that has faded but is never fully gone.

There is no big resolution here. Just realizing that certain relationships change over time but never completely disappear. They settle into the crevices of life, becoming part of our identities. And maybe that is enough.

The rain poured down without mercy, chilling and drenching, seeping through every layer of clothing and skin. The town loomed in the distance. Its narrow path meanders through shadows created by bent lampposts and the subtle shape of a river in the distance. Though I never intended to stop here, I did. The rain was relentless, and I needed a refuge. This place was as good as anywhere with cafes and warmth.

Then I caught sight of it. A little worn-out sign swinging in the rain. I read the name and felt my throat seize. How long has it been? A lifetime has passed, but the heart maintains its own sense of time, unencumbered by the limitations of calendars and years.

I felt a strong instinct to turn away. I suppose it’s easier to face the storm outside than what lies within. But my curiosity drove me forward. Parking and gathering my stuff, I braved the downpour. On the cold iron doorknob, my hand trembled. The cold seeped into my flesh, and before I could think twice, the door softly cracked open.

The aroma of old paper and a subtle earthy tone greeted me first. The dim light created shadows on the walls, which were filled with books that appeared to go on forever. It was like entering a place that seemed to stand still in time.

And then I spotted him.

He sat behind the counter, buried in the pages of a book. In some ways, he looked the same. However, there were also signs of time. Strands of silver in his hair, a sweater frayed at the cuffs, and the faint heaviness of a life lived alone.

He didn’t notice me at first. For a brief moment I forgot how to breathe. The soft rustling of the page he turned brought me back to the moment. He glanced upward. Our eyes met, and then those years vanished in an instant. There was no dramatic pause or rush of words.

Time has passed as it inevitably does. It leads us into lives that are separate and distant from one another. But in the soft glow of this overlooked part of the world, that distance seemed trivial.

The conversation that ensued didn’t focus on the past, at least not in a direct way. Our discourse danced around the periphery, hinting at years and stories that belonged to others. Our separate lives had been transformed by the absence of the other. Despite our best efforts to distance ourselves, the past remained between us.

The rain subsided while we talked. Its steady beat taps against the windowpanes. Our conversation didn’t lead to any resolution or sudden insight. Instead, there was something more nuanced, perhaps a sense of acceptance or a hesitant acknowledgement of what remained.

I found myself hesitating when it was time to go. Our conversation brought a sense of peace, like a gentle reminder of the shared moments with someone who once meant so much. But I had to go. Time went by, and the people we had turned into existed in separate realities.

I stepped back into the drizzle and back in my car. My heart aches because it finally understood that some connections, no matter how changed by time, never really disappear. They stay, though no longer in their original form. They turned into echoes that tightly knotted into the essence of our being.

And maybe that was all it needed to be.

Related story: Being In the Same Room Again

Fragmented Story | His Days Were Long

Writing complete stories has never been my style. My mind wanders, seeking and focusing on moments and emotions that demand attention, even if they don’t always fit neatly into a beginning, middle, and end—like poetry. I find myself drawn to fragments of moments that exist between greater narratives. It’s in these fragments that I discover what I need to express, often eliciting more emotion with a single, still snapshot than an entire storyline.

This piece, His Days Were Long, is one such fragment. It’s a story of a man torn between his responsibilities and a yearning he can’t quite shake. It’s a little piece of a wider web of stories that live within me, ready to be told one at a time. These moments are disjointed and incomplete but filled with meaning, but these are where I feel most alive in my writing. So I’ll keep sharing them in bits and pieces, each with its own truth and emotion.

His days were long. His nights were even longer. He lived in a world of crime scenes, cold cases, and sleepless chases under neon-lit streets. Whether he was flipping through reports, putting cuffs on suspects, or driving while tailing someone through the rain, his hands were always busy.

But it didn’t matter how deep he was in a case or how many hours he worked; his mind would always go back to her.

He would often feel it in the quiet moments—between interrogations or right before he kicked open a door. The agony of missing her. He’d wonder what she was doing, if she was thinking of him too. Sometimes he’d reach for his phone, tempted to bridge the gap between them. But then duty would pull him back, and he’d shove the thought away.

But it was the nights that were the worst. Sitting at his desk, the only light coming from the flickering lamp above him. His body was exhausted, but his mind wouldn’t stop. He’d lean back, close his eyes, and there she was. That smile. Her giggle. The tilt of her head when she was amused.

And in those moments he hated that he wasn’t with her.

Maybe that’s why he pushed hard, worked himself to the bone because he was afraid that if he stopped, he’d remember how much he wanted and needed her.

Handwritten draft of this story.