Many days circle back to me in unexpected ways, and today it feels as if time decided to loosen its grip just enough for one memory to slip through. I can still see that small figure at my window, a quiet arrival without fear, almost as if he had rehearsed the moment. He was this white and gray little wanderer with the kind of blue eyes that made you stop whatever you were doing, even if what you were doing felt important. I called him Michito, almost by instinct, the way you name things that already feel familiar long before you understand why. He had that mix of street born boldness and fragile sweetness that only a few creatures carry with dignity. He demanded food with the confidence of someone who knew he was already loved, and I let him believe it because it was true. When I think of him now, I realize how simple it all was, and how those simple things are the ones that end up defining entire seasons of a life without asking permission.
Real companionship often arrives in shapes that do not try to teach you a lesson or underline a moral. He was like that, a small presence with no urgency to be more than what he already was. I remember how he used to follow me with that calm certainty, not as someone who obeyed, but as someone who decided. Freedom was his invisible language, and I could almost hear it every time he settled on the terrace roof, stretching as if the horizon belonged to him. He never allowed me to domesticate him, and in a strange way, that felt like his way of showing respect. He taught me that closeness has nothing to do with control and everything to do with choosing to stay. Those afternoons with him were not grand moments, but they still echo with a softness that refuses to disappear. Sometimes the smallest lives leave the deepest marks without ever trying to become symbols or metaphors.
There is a photo on my phone that I revisit more often than I admit. He is on the rooftop, sitting with that stillness animals understand better than we do, looking toward a line of sky that seemed endless. He looked serene, as if he knew that beauty happens in the pauses we forget to appreciate. I took those photos without thinking they would become the last ones. Life does that sometimes, it turns ordinary captures into relics. Maybe that is why I woke up today with that lingering ache, not painful enough to break me but strong enough to make me stop. I had planned my post for Wednesday Walk yesterday, as I always do, but today felt different. The routine was there, yes, but the intention shifted. I felt a quiet pull to speak about him, not because sadness insisted, but because memory felt warm and alive, and I wanted that warmth to breathe somewhere outside my chest.
Each time I walk through familiar spaces, I still expect him to appear with that confident little stride, like a king returning from an adventure only he understood. It never happens, and yet the absence does not feel like emptiness. It feels like continuity. Days have passed, and love remains the same, buddy. I say that in my mind sometimes, like a small message delivered into the air. It carries no drama, no sorrow that demands attention, just a truth that settled in me over time. I think he knew what freedom cost and what it offered. I admired that. I admired how he came and went, how he accepted my care without surrendering his wild core. There was something pure about that balance, something I try to remember when life gets loud and demanding. Loving something that walks its own path is not an easy skill, but it is a beautiful one.
Some people think Wednesday Walk is only about landscapes and snapshots of movement, but I believe these stories belong here too. Walks are not only made of steps. They are also made of the companions who share the path for a while, even if that while is shorter than we hoped. Today is Thursday, I know, but the thread of yesterday carried me here, and I am letting it guide me. Maybe someone will read this and remember their own small friend, their own rooftop moment, their own reminder that connection does not need ownership to feel real. I like to think that somewhere out there, my good Michito is still wandering with that gentle audacity of his, still claiming rooftops and horizons like a quiet conqueror. And even if time keeps moving as it always does, the affection does not shift or fade. It stays steady, the way certain truths stay steady without noise or spectacle. That is the kind of love that survives the calendar, the routine, the distance. And it is the kind I carry today as I share this small chapter of him, faithful in its simplicity, complete in its honesty.
