Having walked all the path to that curious park by checking the GPS on my mobile, I now thought it was enough: I could finish the way on my own. And I was sure I had to go up the wide and long stairway which I was facing to reach my destination – it would be like the curtains opening for a spectacle. But instead, as I climbed the stairs, I was becoming less and less certain that this was the direction I was supposed to take… Then, looking up at the highest point of the stairway, doubting my once-conviction, there I saw them: The couple; there I saw it: The most passionate kiss.

Watching this scene – indeed it felt like a spectacle – I imagined that this couple had just reunited – after all, we were near the station, the station to which I, myself, was going, and which I had mistakenly believed, just a moment ago, to be at the top of the stairs, behind them. (Was my being drawn to their story related to my own? Half suspended in time and space, wandering without really having anywhere to go or to go back to, the mind becomes more attuned to others’ ordinary emotions – ordinary, not banal, emotions.) Suddenly, however, I got closer to their truth: I realised what was really happening: It was a goodbye kiss.

I slowly climbed two or three more steps – not looking at the immediate next step, but at them – and their desolation, and their longing for the deep connection their love created, seemed to be screaming into the blue sky above our heads. But the reality was, each one had a foot in their own world, for there, in each one’s own world, was where each one belonged. It was a goodbye kiss.

He went down the stairs; she stayed up there… They kept eye contact for as long as they could. 

I finally reached the top of the stairway myself, which opened up to an impressively wide horizon. But turning 360 degrees around my feet, I saw nothing. No sign of the station. Just a void: The void left behind by the most passionate kiss.

• Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse ‘inspired’ me when coming up with these sentences.