Email, Sent
From: Nabila
Subject: Archive Closure Complete
Sent: Fri 20/2/26 5:45 PM GMT+6
Hello Ayan,
This is to confirm that the hosting subscription for our shared domain officially expired as of midnight. The server-side data has been purged, and the archiving process is now fully complete. All administrative ties to the platform have been severed.
I have uploaded the final compressed library into the shared cloud folder we both have access to. I suggest you move these files to a local drive or a personal cloud service at your earliest convenience. While I intend to keep the folder active for the foreseeable future, I can no longer guarantee its maintenance alongside my other digital commitments. All files remain available there should you need to reference them in the future.
With this final step, all matters related to the blog are resolved. It is a strange thing to reach the end of a project that spanned so many years of our lives. When we first began, the technicalities felt secondary to the content. Now, the technicalities are all that remain. It has been a significant undertaking to ensure that every post and every comment was preserved in the manner they deserved. I am satisfied that the work has been documented with the precision we once discussed.
I want to acknowledge your last note regarding your routine in London. I appreciate the clarity you provided about your current situation. It seems that we have both found a way to navigate our respective environments by leaning into the structure of our work. There is a certain necessity in that, I suppose. The mechanical nature of a schedule can be a helpful tool when the broader landscape feels less certain. I hope the winter there begins to ease soon, and that the longer days provide a bit more balance to your office routine.
It is clear that we have moved into different phases of our lives. The routines here in Dhaka are demanding, but they provide a sense of purpose that I have come to value deeply. My current professional obligations require a level of focus that leaves little room for looking back; yet, I am glad we took this time to close the archive properly. It felt like a responsibility that needed to be honored, if only for the sake of the people we were when we started it. Those two students were very earnest about their world, and I felt I owed it to them to ensure their record didn’t just vanish into a broken link.
I reviewed the materials one last time before the site went dark. The writing still holds a certain energy that is difficult to replicate now. It was a testament to a very specific time and a very specific connection. I am glad those fragments exist, even if they are now just data points in a folder.
I wish you well in your work and your life in London. I hope you find the creative fulfillment you were looking for when you left. I also hope you find a way to fix that window in your flat; silence is one thing, but a drafty room in a London winter sounds like an unnecessary hardship.
Thank you for the part you played in building what we had. It was, at one point, the most important thing in my world.
With this, I consider my role in this matter concluded. I do not expect a reply to this, as there are no further administrative steps to take.
Take care of yourself, Ayan.
Best regards,
Nabila
Draft, Never Sent
From: Nabila
Subject: Ending notes.
Last Updated: Sat 21/2/26 2:09 AM GMT+6
Ayan,
It has been barely ten minutes since I closed off the archives—finally, once and for all. I thought that closing off the archives would relieve me of the weight I have carried all these years. I saw the blog as a relic from the past that reminded me of a strange hurt. But now that the weight of carrying what was supposed to be a thing for two people, as one tiny human being in this urban jungle, has been lifted, a new weight has swept in and taken me over. I’m now flooded by emptiness. I feel like a blank cell on an unused spreadsheet with no title.
I keep thinking about how things turned out for us. I keep thinking about the tiny things. I think about how your smile gradually became a quarter of an inch less wide. I think about how you stopped showing up early to class to set the AC to 25, all because I felt cold easily. I think about how at our grad gala, you didn’t wear your usual skinny black tie—the one I bought you. You let go, slowly, right in front of my eyes.
I keep blaming you for leaving. I blame you because I kept waiting for you. I kept waiting for you, until today. Today, as I logged out of my old email—the last step of letting go of the blog—I blinked. I blinked, and it all disappeared. It was all in front of me, and I let it disappear. I let go.
I let you go, Ayan. It was me who let go. I let your absence make me bitter. In your absence, I forgot how to let people in. I forgot how to talk like a normal human being. My maintenance of the blog, I told myself, was due to how valuable it was to me. I taught myself not to think about you. But I read every post you wrote, countless times, over and over. Through my screen, I tried to feel your presence. There were days when I couldn’t sleep without having read your posts. You wrote a lot about rain and about stars. Whenever it rained back in our days and we were together, you would murmur random things that only made sense to you. So, every time it rained, I was forced to think about you. It’s raining right now.
The blog was an invisible thread. I imagined holding onto you by holding onto it. But now we’ve both let go.
I kept yapping about the need for structure. I needed a vision. I needed frameworks. You never gave me those. But in hindsight, I realize that your chaos was the only thing that stopped me from becoming black and white. I thought to be compatible was to match. But truly and earnestly, Ayan, to be compatible is to complement. No one has done that for me better than you. I don’t think anyone ever will.
I shouldn’t have let you go. I should’ve been the one to call. I should’ve fought you, gotten on your nerves until you fought back. I should’ve screamed at you. I should’ve made a scene at the airport the day I went to see you off. I should’ve fought about how you still haven’t returned my copy of Normal People. I should’ve sworn at you just for the hell of it, just to get you to talk. If I could go back, Ayan, I would’ve done all of that. I would’ve made a fool of myself and sent you more voice notes. I would’ve cried. I would’ve told you that I love you.
There’s a post on the blog I made on Humayun Ahmed’s death anniversary. Some sentences he wrote that I translated into English. The cover had night-blooming jasmines, your favorite flowers. The lines went:
The person in front of me is smiling. Seeing his smile sent shivers down my spine. As if my doom were standing there, right in front of my eyes. I realized, for the first time, that in this life I wouldn’t be able to think of anyone but this person.
That post was never about Humayun Ahmed. It was about you. I could never forget about you, Ayan. Even today, I miss you on the train to Sylhet as it passes the hills and the tea gardens. I miss you every morning. In my head, we still get married, even though I never told you these things. I know “Robbers” is your favorite song. But did you know that Matty wrote “About You” as a sequel to “Robbers”? We never got around to having our chemically romantic moment. But even unto this day, I’ve been holding onto the hope that you’ll find your way back to me in the end. I saw that you had a playlist on Spotify with my name on it. I kept hoping you’d send it to me one day. You never did. I wonder if you still have that playlist saved. Do you listen to it still?
I’m writing this draft to find my closure. This is my last ode to you. I’ll never be able to tell you these things anymore. We’ve burned all our bridges, after all. Goodbye, Ayan.
With love, for the last time,
Nabila
Epilogue
Draft, Sent (Accidental)
From: Ayan
Subject: No Subject
Sent: Sun 21/2/26 12:03 AM GMT
Dear Nabila,
I’m drunk, again. I listened to your voice note again. It’s playing in the background as I write this email. The weather here is gloomy, as it always is. It’s raining outside—not the kind of rain we used to play in back when we were fifteen. It’s the kind of rain that exhausts you, the kind that compels you to stay in bed. I’m alone, as usual. There’s a buzzing noise coming from somewhere. I know it’s mechanical, but it sounds like crickets humming. It’s probably intoxication, an everyday affair for me at this point. Who knew the kid who never even smoked would, at one point, turn into an alcoholic?
I never got around to posting the blog entry where I confess my love for you. I didn’t even upload it to the drafts folder. I made sure there was no way for you to read it. I wanted you to wake up one day and find it on the blog’s wall, the one space in the world where I could open up to you.
I wrote in my last draft that I wouldn’t write to you anymore. But for some reason, here I am all over again. This email won’t be sent to you either. It’s just me pouring my heart out in my empty apartment on a random winter night in London. The words that are going to follow are words I wrote years ago. But even today, with all bridges burned and all threads cut loose, these words still hold true.
Please find attached, Nabila, the things I feel about you, in words and in songs.
Sincerely yours,
Ayan
An Ode to Songs Gatekept
I’ve always been one to gatekeep songs. I view music in a manner comparable to fossil fuels: valuable but finite. Sharing a song with someone has always felt like sharing my understanding of it—thus the meaning, and so the emotions. And so, I find it difficult to show such vulnerability to anyone. You’ll never find me sharing YouTube links and Spotify playlists with anyone. My music is my personal panic room, my version of Max’s cave in Vecna’s world. So, I let no one in there. Except for one person.
I find myself obsessed with The 1975’s “Robbers”. Matty Healy once said that the song was inspired by Tarantino’s True Romance. The cinematic mess of two people, obsessed with knowing each other to an extent that the rest of the world fades away in the distance, fascinated him. And it fascinates me. The idea that two people can love each other so much—that their obsession with knowing each other to their bones becomes a vessel to rob each other of all other worldly indulgences—electrocutes my nerves and fills me with a feeling of euphoria. That doomed, frantic, borderline-toxic version of love feels like a goal. The goal to be so electric and profound that the world has to pull the plug on you. This idea of love didn’t require me to be composed or reliable; it just demanded abstraction and obsession.
And then there is Coldplay’s “Yellow”. The sincerity of this simple, anthemic love song has terrified me so much that I’ve never even talked about it with anyone. The song doesn’t hide behind leather jackets, or cigarettes, or fancy words from the dictionary. It finds its comfort in being overtly bright, loud, and cliché. There is an uncomfortable degree of bravado in the song and its words. It shows up and it hits you, saying: “Look at the stars, look how they shine for you.” I’ve never considered myself bold enough to be someone’s “Yellow,” or to call someone mine. I’ve never felt enough as a person to have my own story in the vein of “Robbers”. I couldn’t be the bright sunflower under the open blue sky in the scorching afternoon sun. The darkness of the night wasn’t welcoming to me either. So, I chose the color grey: not light, not dark.
The need to gatekeep these two songs came naturally to me. It came naturally to me until one day, when this girl, standing in the soft golden hue of the afternoon sun, smiled at me with her half-moon smile, and I lost my place.
Since then, my capricious greys have started to dull in the light of the sun—her sun. We’ve played in the rain; we’ve stood with our feet in the sand, together. With her, I’ve experienced light. I’ve also immersed myself in the dark of the night. I look at her and I realize: I could send her every song I’ve ever known. In my panic room, while I’m crashing out, I want her to hold my hand.
I love how she keeps fighting me for order and structure. I realize every day that even when I’m close to my doom and my body starts to turn blue, the last memory that will flash in front of my eyes will be the image of her eyes glowing from the rays of the sun.
Even when time has taken its toll, and the girl with the half-moon smile has no teeth left to show, I will still be staring at her. I will still be invested in my pursuit of knowing her, with the world fading out in the background. I’ve always wondered what feeling “Yellow” had trapped inside it. Now I know that it’s the feeling of comfort. The comfort of letting someone see you to your skin and your bones, knowing they won’t look away.
So I will always stare at Nabila, until death do us part.
She is my “Yellow”. She has been all along.
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