An Ode Owed to an Angel

First impressions are strange things. Most disappear before the day has even finished. They smile. You smile. Life carries on without either of you remembering the colour of the other's eyes. Then every so often, someone arrives who refuses to become ordinary. You did not announce yourself with noise. There was no grand entrance. No performance. No desperate need to be seen. You simply stood there, completely yourself, and somehow that was louder than everyone else. I remember leaving with a curious thought I could not quite explain. Not, "I hope I see her again." But, "I know I will." There is a difference. One is hope. The other is the quiet certainty that life has already made its decision.

The world is full of remarkable people. Or so it likes to believe. Everyone trying desperately to become unforgettable, rarely noticing that the loudest voices are often forgotten first. You never seemed interested in being noticed. Perhaps that was the beginning. You spoke because you meant it. You listened because you cared. You laughed without asking whether the room approved first. There was no performance. No carefully constructed version of yourself. Only honesty, quietly refusing to apologise for existing. That was what stayed with me. Not beauty, though you had it. Not intelligence, though you possessed that in abundance. It was something far rarer. The courage to simply be yourself. In a world forever pretending, you never seemed to need the disguise.

I have met beautiful people. I have met clever people. I have met charismatic people. The world is not short of any of them. But rarity has never belonged to beauty. Nor intelligence. Nor charm. Rarity belongs to character. You carry your kindness without demanding recognition. You speak without trying to conquer. You listen without merely waiting for your turn. The world teaches people to harden. To become less trusting. Less hopeful. Less themselves. Yet somehow, through everything, you simply remained you. Not untouched. Not unscarred. Simply unwilling to let pain decide who you would become. That is why you are different. Not because life spared you. But because it didn't. And still, you chose to remain gentle.

Life has an unusual way of teaching us its greatest lessons. Rarely through comfort, almost always through loss. None of us ask for the storms that shape us. We only discover, afterwards, what they left behind. You once poured pints for strangers passing through. Ordinary evenings, ordinary conversations. Yet quietly, without anyone knowing, life was preparing you for different words. It is a cruel truth that pain often becomes the doorway through which we finally meet ourselves. Not because grief is something beautiful. It isn't, and it never will be. But because it strips away everything that was borrowed. The masks. The expectations. Until all that remains is the voice that had been waiting to be heard. People will read the poems you write and admire their honesty. I will always admire the woman who found them. Not by escaping sorrow, but by walking straight through it, and carrying back something beautiful.

Life could have written your story very differently. It had every opportunity. It handed you grief without warning, loss without fairness, and questions without answers. Many would have understood if you had surrendered to bitterness. No one would have blamed you. Yet every time life invited you to become your suffering, you quietly declined. You carried your scars, but never yourself as broken. That has always been the difference. You never pretended the darkness hadn't existed. You simply refused to build your home inside it. Strength is often mistaken for never falling, it isn't. Strength is rising, again and again, until standing becomes your nature. That is what I admire. Not that you survived. But that, after everything, you still chose to become more than what happened to you.

Some people believe they have already found all the answers. The world becomes smaller for them every day, you have always been different. You walk through life with questions instead of conclusions, wonder instead of certainty. That is a rare gift. Not the ability to know everything, but the courage to keep learning. You look at the ordinary as though it still deserves your attention. A poem. A stranger. A forgotten story. You never seem to ask, "What do I already know?" Only, "What have I yet to understand?". Perhaps that is why your mind never stopped growing. Curiosity is not merely the search for knowledge. It is the quiet belief that tomorrow still has something beautiful left to teach us.

Laughter has always been misunderstood. People imagine it belongs to easy lives. I have learnt the opposite. Sometimes, the brightest laughter comes from those who know darkness best. Yours never asks permission. It simply arrives, unannounced, and reminds the room to breathe again. There is kindness hidden inside the way you make people smile. Not because you seek attention. But because you quietly carry light where it is needed. I have always thought humour is less about being amusing, and more about making life a little easier for everyone else. That is what yours does. It turns ordinary moments into memories, and difficult days into something that suddenly feels survivable. There is a beautiful honesty in someone who still laughs, not because life has been easy, but because they choose to be brighter than it.

People often imagine resilience as something loud. A battle cry. A clenched fist. A refusal to bend. I have never seen it that way. I have found the strongest people are usually the quietest. They wake. They carry on. They refuse to let yesterday steal today. You have never pretended life was fair. Nor have you waited for it to become so. Instead, you learnt to stand when standing was difficult. To smile when smiling asks something of you. To keep walking forward, even when the road had forgotten how to be kind. That is what resilience has always looked like to me. Not invincibility. Not perfection. Simply, the quiet courage to begin again, every single morning.

Conversation has always felt strange to me. So much noise. So many words are spoken without ever saying anything. Most discussions begin exactly where they end. The same thoughts. The same conclusions. The same roads travelled until they become too familiar to notice. Then there is you. You ask the unexpected. You notice what others walk straight past. You have the rare ability to place a single thought inside my mind, then leave it there for days. Long after the conversation has ended, I find myself returning to it, seeing something I hadn't seen before. That is an uncommon gift. Not intelligence. There are many intelligent people. Wonder. The kind that quietly awakens wonder in someone else. You have never filled my mind. You have simply opened another door, and left me curious enough to walk through it alone.

The world has a habit of noticing the obvious. The loudest voices. The brightest lights. The moments that ask to be remembered. But I have always found myself drawn instead to the quieter things. The pauses before you speak. The way you listen without ever making it feel rehearsed. The small smile that arrives before the laughter. The kindness you offer without expecting to be thanked. These are the things most people never notice. Not because they are hidden. Only because they are gentle. The world moves quickly. It celebrates spectacle, certainty, and noise. You remind me that there is another kind of beauty. One that never asks to be admired. It simply exists, quietly making the lives around it better. I think that is why people feel safe with you. Not because you demand their trust, but because your nature has already earned it. Perhaps the greatest parts of a person are always the ones they never realise they're giving away.

There is something about Scotland that feels like the world has slowed down. The mountains stand quieter. The lochs hold their secrets. The ancient stones of old castles remember more than we ever could. We imagine ourselves there, walking beside water that has existed long before us, laughing at how small two people can feel beneath a sky so endless. And then, somehow, you would look at a freezing loch and casually suggest something completely unreasonable. A moment of madness. A memory waiting to happen. Skinny dipping is the kind of idea that makes sense only because it came from you. And when you spoke about Bo and Obs keeping me afloat, I realised something. Perhaps that is what has always been different about us. Even your ridiculous ideas come with kindness. Even your chaos comes with care. Some people search their whole lives for grand adventures. But perhaps adventure is not always found in the places we travel. Sometimes, it is found in the person standing beside us, laughing beside a loch, beneath an ancient sky, making even the impossible feel like something worth trying.

Time has always behaved strangely when I speak with you. Minutes become hours. Hours become memories. Somehow, the night always arrives too early. Most conversations feel like roads leading nowhere. You walk them out of politeness, then quietly forget where they went. Ours have never been like that. One thought becomes another. A question finds an answer, only to become a different question entirely. There is never a need to force silence. It comes when it wishes, then leaves again without either of us trying to fill it. I have always thought the best conversations are the ones that change the people having them. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just enough that tomorrow arrives with one more idea than yesterday. Perhaps that is why I have never grown tired of talking with you. Because every conversation feels less like passing time, and more like discovering another small corner of the world together.

Some conversations feel like debates. Two people standing on opposite sides, trying to prove who is right. Ours have never asked for winners. An idea arrives quietly. You turn it ever so slightly. I see something I hadn't noticed. Then I add another thought, and suddenly we are somewhere neither of us expected to be. It is less like speaking, and more like building. One stone. Then another. Until a bridge exists, and neither of us can remember who placed the first one. That has always felt remarkable to me. Not agreement. Agreement is easy. Understanding. The kind that grows between two minds curious enough to keep walking together. Some people finish each other's sentences. We seem to finish each other's ideas, only to discover there was another waiting just beyond it.

Every friendship collects its own language. Words that mean nothing to anyone else, yet somehow hold entire memories inside a single sentence. Ours began to gather quietly, until one day they became a language of their own. There was your joke that I would best be welcomed arriving at your house wearing a kilt, as though that were the most natural thing in the world. Then came Smoo Cave. Your perfectly serious plan to lock me inside, visit from time to time, and quietly keep me all to yourself. I never did decide whether I should have been worried or strangely flattered. Then there was your house. A bottle or two, your bedroom door closed with purpose not to keep the world out, but to keep me safe from Lisa. Only you could make protective custody feel so welcoming. Then I told you the hotel I was staying at had horse riding. You smiled and asked, "So you want me to ride the horse?" Without thinking, I instantly replied, "Well, you can either ride me or the horse. I'd rather you ride the horse for now". The laughter arrived instantly. Not because the joke was perfect, but because it belonged to us. That has always been my favourite kind of humour. The sort that could never be explained, only remembered. Inside jokes are not really jokes at all. They are little pieces of two lives, hidden inside a smile.

I think one of life's greatest pleasures is not arriving. It is imagining where the road might one day lead. With you, the future has always felt less like a destination, and more like a conversation. One moment, we are wandering through the Roman Forum, following the footsteps of people who have been gone for two thousand years, wondering which stones Marcus Aurelius and Augustus might once have passed. The next, we are somewhere in the Highlands, building our own little hamlet where the world finally becomes quiet. Three small houses. One for us complete with a dog and a pet bird. One for your dad. One for Lisa. And between them, a single fire, where stories would always outlast the evening. None of it needed to be real to matter. Because every dream we imagined together became a place we had already visited in our minds. Perhaps that is the greatest adventure of all. Not travelling across the world, but finding someone who makes every tomorrow feel worth imagining.

People often imagine that change arrives like a storm. Loud. Sudden. Impossible to ignore. I have found it rarely behaves that way. More often, it arrives so quietly that you only notice it has happened when you catch yourself thinking differently. Before you, I measured the world by caution. By distance. By the quiet habit of expecting less than life might have offered. Then you appeared, and without ever asking, you began changing the questions I asked of myself. You reminded me that strength does not always wear armour. That kindness can stand without becoming weak. That hope is not the denial of hardship, but the refusal to let hardship have the final word. You never asked me to become someone else. Perhaps that is why I did. Not because you changed who I was, but because you quietly revealed who I had been capable of becoming all along.

People sometimes ask why I write. As though words were a decision, rather than a place I inevitably return to. There are thoughts too quiet for conversation. Feelings too intricate to survive being spoken aloud. Poetry has always felt like the only place where they are free to become themselves. A poem asks for nothing. It does not interrupt. It does not judge. It simply waits until honesty finds the courage to arrive. I have never written to impress. Nor to persuade. Nor to leave my name behind. I write because sometimes a single page can hold what a thousand conversations never could. And when these words have found their way to you, then perhaps they were never mine alone. Perhaps they were simply waiting for the person they were always meant to reach.

People have often asked why my thoughts always seem to wander north. They imagine it is about scenery. The mountains. The lochs. The endless skies. They are only seeing the surface. I look north because stories still breathe there. Where mountains carry names older than kingdoms. Where the wind moves through glens that have outlived every crown that claimed them. Empires have always believed they were permanent. History has always smiled at such confidence. A kingdom rises. A banner falls. A ruler becomes another page in another dusty book. Yet myths… myths refuse to surrender. They pass from one generation to the next, never asking permission to survive. That is why they fascinate me. Power demands obedience. A myth only asks to be remembered. Perhaps that is why my heart keeps travelling north. Not because I am searching for another country. But because I am searching for a place where stories are still treated as something stronger than power itself.

The world is built upon impossible odds. Billions of lives, each travelling their own quiet road, rarely knowing how close they came to another. It would have been the simplest thing for our paths never to cross. A different day. A different decision. One missed moment, and we would have remained strangers forever. I have often thought about that. How something so ordinary can become something so important. Not because our meeting changed the world. The world carried on exactly as before. But mine didn't. You became one of those rare people who quietly altered the landscape of another life. Not through grand gestures. Not through dramatic moments. Simply by being yourself, consistently enough that I began to see the world a little differently. Perhaps that is what truly matters. Not how long we know someone. Nor how loudly they arrive. But whether, after meeting them, we are still the same person. I am not. And I have never considered that a loss, only one of life's quietest blessings.

People will say it is only a book. Only twenty poems. Only paper, ink, and thought. They will be right. And yet, they will have missed the point. A book has never been about paper. It is memory, asking permission to outlive us. Long after our conversations have become echoes, and laughter belongs only to recollection, these pages will still remember. Not every moment. No book could hold an entire person. But enough. Enough to remind the future that once, among the billions who have lived, there was someone who made another life a little wiser, a little lighter, and infinitely more interesting. You once asked me why I write. Perhaps this has always been the answer. Because some people pass through your life like weather. Others become part of the landscape. You are not a passing season. You are one of the places my soul quietly returns to. So why would I write a whole book just for you? Because poems are remembered long after conversations end. Because gratitude deserves more than a passing sentence. Because the rarest people should never be left to memory alone. And because, if one day these pages outlive us both, I like the thought that somewhere, someone who never knew either of us might close this book, sit in silence for a little while, and think, "She must have been someone extraordinary.". They would be right!