When goodbye tastes like beginning

We didn’t fall asleep that night.

Not because of nerves. Not because we didn’t want to. But because there was something more important to do than sleep: say goodbye well.

It was our first kiss. Our first night. Our first holding of each other in real time, not just in ideas or projected hopes. We lay there, fully clothed, spooned into a shape neither of us had known we’d been missing. Breathing gently. Kissing slowly. Letting it be what it was—not a prelude, not a promise, just the pure moment of it all.

And then we got up, not reluctantly but respectfully—because the clock doesn’t stop just because you’ve found something sacred.

You threw on your helmet. I strapped on mine. You kicked the scooter into life and I climbed onto the back, hands finding your hips not out of flirtation but for balance. For warmth. For gratitude.

You rode me to the bus station like a guardian spirit with a motor. And even then, as the lights of Đà Lạt flickered in that cool, early hour, I knew this wasn’t a goodbye I’d forget.

At the platform, we didn’t cling. There were no dramatic sobs or over-performed gestures. But something holy happened.

I took your hand and kissed it.

Not out of performance, but reverence.

You did the same to mine. Regal. Playful. Tender.

And we smiled at each other like the sun was rising inside us, not just behind the mountains.

Then I boarded that overnight sleeper bus to Hồ Chí Minh City for my first visa run—a strange, bureaucratic rite of passage for foreigners like me in Vietnam. As I settled into a seat far too small for my Western limbs, bouncing along roads too chaotic for real sleep, I didn’t care.

Because on Zalo, we were still talking. Messaging. Laughing. Touching fingertips through screens and sentences.

A goodbye had become a continuation.

And that was when I knew something rare had begun.

Not because we had kissed.

But because even after we kissed, we didn’t disappear.