(Only You - Portishead)

It is the early hours of the morning when Gregor looks at you, lost in the shadows that embrace the room. There’s something in his gaze empty, perhaps, or a faint storm that always pulls you toward him, even though you know the tide is often cruel to you.

He murmurs your name, but there’s a fragility in his voice that promises no permanence. You’re nothing more than an echo in his memory every day he wakes. Sometimes he forgets who you are; other times, his forgetfulness is crueler: he remembers you only to cast aside what you built together. And you, as always, stay, because in that forgetfulness, you also find love, brief and broken as it may be.

In his fractured voice, he confesses: "It's only you who can tear me apart, and it's only you who can turn my wooden heart."

It’s an eternal cycle: you, clinging to the fleeting moment when he becomes human again through your words, and he, losing himself once more in his prison of exoskeleton and eroded memory. You wonder if love can bloom in the cracks of so much pain. The answer, perhaps, doesn’t matter.

The morning breaks selfishly; he has forgotten you again. And yet, you don’t move. Your heart doesn’t turn to stone but becomes more like wood: sensitive, vulnerable to the fire that is Gregor Samsa. Because you know that, even though he forgets, when he returns to you, he does so with the intensity of a thousand storms devastating you, but giving you purpose.

Deep down, you are both victims of crimes of illusion: you, of a love that never fully manifests; he, of an existence that consumes him.