Untethered

She led me down strange paths, over rocky beaches, and through ruined places that never had names. She hated familiar. Sometimes, she walked barefoot to feel the new terrain. She liked the way the stones scraped against her feet—a small reminder of her mortality. She had come to terms with her mortality.

She loved running. She stopped for me often, slowing down even though she hated slowing down. She was driven by newness, the “what-next”, the mystery at the end of the tunnel. I was driven by her, searching, trudging, finding relics of the world because she was leading the way.

Her rule was simple: a new day, a new place. Objects in motion stay in motion. She needed to stay in motion. I grew tired of walking. She grew tired of my tiredness. We tolerated these contradictory parts of ourselves.

I loved her. It wasn’t infatuation but admiration. I wanted to be like her—led by untamed curiosity, a brave woman in a frightening world. She was rarely frightened. The only thing that scared her was stillness. She once mused that movement was a gift from the earth, a gift that, in some way, must be returned.

She’d carry rocks in her pocket, toss them into puddles and gaze at the harmless destruction of the water’s surface. A tempest, she’d shake tree branches, freeing acorns and forgotten fruits. She was devoted to fixing innate stillness.

She looked at the world differently. She looked at me differently. When we slept, she’d watch me. Sometimes, she’d hold her hand on my chest to feel the rise and fall like the ocean’s pull on a shoreline. I stole glimpses of her often, caught her staring at me in the half-dazed lull of twilight.

I thought she saw something in me that no one else did. But now, I’m sure she looked at me so often because she was searching for something she could never find. Even now, I wonder if her lingering gaze still searches for buried secrets in the simplest things.

She hated sleeping more than anything in the world. But sometimes, we walked so far that all I could do was sleep. We slept everywhere—beneath trees, on sandy beaches, in hammocks beside the river.

We didn’t always sleep outside. When it was wintry, we slept in cheap motels with cigarette smoke lingering on the walls and sheets that were scratchy but still better than nothing. No matter where we rested, we had the same purpose in the morning—pack up, leave nothing behind, walk.

One day, I stopped walking. I was exhausted, roused late at night by the sound of passing trucks on the highway nearby. My feet were blistered and raw. I was desperate to stop, but she seemed fine. I sat, my body anchored to the rocky path, and she didn’t try to move me. She kept walking, undeterred, disinterested in my troubles. Maybe she knew this day would come—I grew tired of liminality.

She left me, and I let her. I didn’t chase her, and like a kite, freed to the cloudless sky, she didn’t seem to care. Sometimes, I wish I kept walking that day, but it would have only postponed the inevitable. She needed to be alone, untethered to someone who wanted to be tethered.

It’s been years since she walked away. I sleep in the same room every night with silk sheets and walls that smell like jasmine. On the bridge, when I pass over the river, I think of her. She whispers to me through the wind. And even though I couldn’t walk anymore, I like to think she’s still roaming, naming unnamed places, making paths less traveled.