A Coffee Date with My Younger Self

The bell above the café door hums a familiar tune as I step inside,

a soft chime that echoes like a memory, I can’t quite place.

The air is thick with the scent of roasted beans and quiet conversations,

a symphony of warmth and something unspoken.

And then I see him.

By the window, where the afternoon light pools like melted honey,

he sits, elbows on the table, fingers tracing the rim of a cup too large for his hands.

Eyes wide, restless, filled with questions he doesn’t yet know how to ask.

A journal lies open beside him, ink smudged on the edges of ambition.

He looks up, and for a moment, time folds in on itself.

Recognition sparks between us, unspoken yet undeniable.

I walk over, and he watches me with a mixture of curiosity and wonder,

as if sensing a part of himself in the quiet weight of my steps.

I take the seat across from him. He tilts his head slightly,

studying me the way one studies a distant horizon,

full of wonder, full of questions.

“I feel like I know you,” he says, his voice steady, but searching.

I smile. “You do.”

Our reflections blur against the café window,

past and present colliding over the steam of an untouched Americano.

The Dreams We Carried

“I hope you’re everything I want to be,” he says, stirring his coffee absently,

his voice steady, but his fingers betray his uncertainty.

I smile. “And I hope you never stop wanting to be more.”

He exhales, staring at the dark surface of his drink as if it holds answers.

“Do we make it?” he asks. “Do we get there?”

There it is,

the question that once kept me awake,

the silent plea folded into every prayer I whispered into the night.

“You’ll learn,” I say,

“that ‘there’ is not a place, but a journey that never ends.”

He frowns, frustrated with the kind of answer that only makes sense in hindsight.

And I remember being him,

aching for certainty, desperate for signs that everything would be okay.

So I soften.

“You will get some of what you dream of,” I say,

“and some of it will change shape."

"Some things will slip through your fingers,

but what remains, what truly matters,

will find its way back to you.”

His shoulders relax, just a little.

“Do we ever stop being scared?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“No. But we learn to walk with it.”

The Self That Stays

The café hums around us, life moving at its usual pace.

Outside, the city stretches in all its chaotic beauty,

full of people chasing, becoming, waiting.

We sit there, two versions of the same person,

two halves of a whole stretched across time.

And as we speak,

him about the fire in his chest, the hunger to leave a mark,

me about the weight of dreams that became real,

the dreams that are still unfolding,

I realize something simple, yet profound.

I am still him.

He is still me.

The boy with stars in his eyes,

the man with constellations in his hands.

The same restless soul,

the same unshaken hope,

the same quiet longing to create, to connect, to matter.

A Promise Across Time

Our coffees have gone cold, but neither of us minds.

The moment lingers, delicate and fleeting, like the last light of dusk.

As we rise, I glance back at him one last time.

His eyes shine with something between hope and understanding.

“Keep going,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I’ll catch up someday.”

I smile, stepping back into the world,

carrying both of us forward,

one dream, one step, one story at a time.