Notes from a Time Traveller by Elke Stevens

Can she still navigate the waters? Or must she learn to trust her inner compass again?

Now that she knows the truth, grief follows. Grief for the woman she thought she was.  

As she revisits old conversations and old silences, replaying social moments with new eyes, wondering what was misread and what was endured. Trying to unravel the truth of then.

She looks back at her romances, the love she gave, the bodies she touched, and she realises she will need to learn how to make love again, slowly, consciously, as her own body has become unfamiliar terrain.

Her words were never wrong; she knows that now, but still, the urge to explain lingers, a reflex shaped by a world that demanded translation for her existence.

She stands at the ocean’s edge, skin reclaimed, as the sea calls her home, but the siren song that once guided her has gone quiet. The waters are beautiful and treacherous. The cliffs are familiar. The way forward is uncertain.

She is breathing but cannot feel it yet; she feels the wind touch her skin, overwhelming, as the salt fills the air. Her body stands in the present while her eyes still look backwards.

This is not the return, but the pause, before remembering how to swim.

© S-Elke 13/12/2025