He married you in spring, beneath pale lilacs and soft rain, and the world called it romantic. You looked like her—his late wife. Same laugh, same tilt of the head, same haunting eyes. But where she had burned bright and reckless, you moved with silence, deliberate and slow, as though afraid to step into someone else’s shadow.

At first, you let him do it. Let him guide you into dresses you didn’t choose, let him place gardenias in your hair because “they suit you,” though they always made you sneeze. He gifted you music boxes that played tunes you never liked, painted your walls the colors she used to love—sunset rose, ocean grey. It was easy to pretend at first. Easier than admitting how your sense of self frayed each time he looked at you and smiled a little too wistfully.

You kept yourself occupied. Needlework. Letters never sent. Books you barely read. You smiled through dinners with his friends who looked at you like a ghost had walked in the room. You laughed when prompted and listened as he told stories, watching his eyes glaze not with affection, but memory. There was love in the way he touched your hand, yes—but it was never yours.

Then came the painting.

It arrived unannounced—grand, draped in velvet. A surprise, he said. Commissioned in secret. Your heart had already begun to thud before the cloth fell away. And then you saw it.

You—but not. Chin tilted the way she used to pose. The same sapphire dress you had found too tight but wore anyway because he liked it. The same wistful smile—yours, stolen. A stranger rendered in your shape.

Your breath caught. Chest tightening. Hands shaking. The edges of the room blurred. And you heard yourself whisper, “I’m not her.”

He turned. "What?"

“I’m not her.” Louder now. Sharper. “I’ve never been her.”

He froze, like glass about to shatter.

“You don’t see me. You’ve never seen me. You’ve been in love with a memory, and I’ve been trying to survive inside it.”

The silence after was devastating.