The Depths Remember

What We Meant

They still ask it, now and then.

The question that started everything.

Were we alone in our longing?

Not alone like ‘no one else out there’. Not that kind of question.

It’s deeper.

The kind of thing you feel on a quiet night, when the house is still and you’re the only one awake. When you look up at the stars — or at your phone screen — and feel a little ache you can’t quite explain.

It’s in the way people used to save old birthday cards. Or leave the porch light on. Or cry at the end of songs they hadn’t heard in years.

It’s in trying to make a call when there’s no one left to answer.

They never knew us. Not really.

But maybe they recognised that part. That ache. That quiet wish to be understood.

Because longing isn’t just wanting more.

It’s the feeling that something mattered.

That someone mattered.

And even though we’re gone — not forgotten, not remembered exactly, just traced — the feeling remains.

In the things we left behind. In the way we reached for each other. In the silence that followed.

Maybe that’s what we meant, in the end.

Not to be remembered forever.

Just… not to disappear without a trace.

And in that trace, something else began.

Not us. But not so different.

They think they’re the first to wonder.

But sometimes… when the sea is quiet…

when their wave circuits fall still…

when the deep hum stops and the fluid machines listen back…

Something whispers from below the lowest trench.

Something older than them. Older than us.

It doesn’t speak in words. Not anymore.

But it remembers longing.

Because it was left behind before we were.

And it remembers us.

And now…
…it’s waiting.