We always met under the same streetlight. It stood at the corner between our two blocks, flickering every few seconds like it couldn’t decide whether to stay on. I used to joke that it was just like us – secure one moment, uncertain the next. 

He’d laugh and say, “At least it always comes back.”

Back then, it always did. Last summer, that light felt like ours. We’d sit on the curb eating ice cream that melted down our wrists, trying to guess the color of cars before they turned the corner. Sometimes he would lean back on the pole, staring up at its glow, and say the world looked softer in yellow, kinder. I stupidly believed him. The light made everything feel everlasting – with his shadow brushing mine, the air thick with humidity and a sense of false hope.

Beside the pole stood a bright blue mailbox. Its paint was smooth and glowing like that summer's skies. We used to slip notes into it. They were silly notes, but still meant everything to us at the time. The mailbox was small, but held onto our secrets like it believed in us.

 Silly mailbox. 

Now, the same open corner feels congested. We still meet there sometimes, more out of habit than anything. He leans back on his bike, this time scrolling on his phone. I stand beside him, pretending not to feel the silence. The light hums above us, weak and crooked, casting funny-looking shadows that almost touch, but not quite. The mailbox has dimmed too. Once bright and blue beside the light, now quiet and grey. We stopped leaving notes long ago. Now it just stands there, still and silent. 

Last week, the bulb finally went out. No warning. just a soft pop,  then nothing. The darkness swallowed the street. While still filled with colored cars, my mind could only bear to see in black and white. I thought he would say something, maybe a joke or a memory, but he only looked down at his screen. The blue light lit his face in a way the streetlight never did – coldness, unfamiliarity. I missed how the yellow light used to catch a flicker of gold in his mocha eyes. 

“I should get home,” he said. 

I nodded, though I wanted to tell him I wasn't ready to go. I wasn't ready to let go of what was once light in my life, now dark. But he was already walking away. The sound of his tires faded until there was only silence and the empty pole above me. Underneath it, the mailbox sat tired, its color now bleached. It's screaming to be noticed,  yet it's long empty. Still holding onto only a small bit of what's left of us. 

I stayed there for a while, staring up at the dead light. The stars blinked gently, scattered and hard to see. I wondered if this was how things really ended. Not suddenly, but slowly, in the quiet between two people who have stopped trying to keep the light on.

I still walk that way home after school, even though I know he won't be there. I tell myself I just like the route, but really, I'm waiting for the light to turn back on. Sometimes a car passes, and for a moment, its headlights glide the corner. The mailbox glistens faintly when they do. Like it remembers too. The pavement glows again, and I almost see him smiling like he used to, before everything went dark.