Strangers
- Katherine Tatsuda

- Oct 6
- 1 min read

October 6, 2025
It’s such a strange, sad thing—
to be strangers with someone who once felt like home.
To have shared mornings and midnights,
to have known their laugh in the dark,
the curve of their breath when they slept,
the rhythm of their footsteps coming up the stairs.
To have built tiny rituals—
Slim Jims and ice cream in bed,
salads and roasted vegetables,
music documentaries—
that at the time felt eternal,
like threads of a life being woven together.
And now
to pass through days where their name rarely crosses my lips,
where silence has taken the place of all the small tendernesses,
where the person who once saw every side of me
walks past me like I don’t exist
and shows signs of life moving on.
It’s a heartbreak that doesn’t roar anymore.
It lingers quietly—like a shadow of a song
you can’t quite remember,
but your body still knows how to hum.
What’s left isn’t hatred or longing anymore.
It’s just the quiet disbelief
that two people once enveloped by infatuation and new love,
that grew into comfort and familiarity despite being tarnished,
can become less than nothing at all.
Strangers—
with a history that only we will ever know.
It all meant something to me.
Now I know I can love deeply, and I can survive heartbreak.



