From back when I was still being pushed around in a pram, having not quite learnt all my letters, the second I first read your names, you’ve always fascinated me, forever leaving me wondering, ‘What happened?’

You burnt your names into a bus-shelter panel, one of many couples proclaiming your connection to the world and graffitiing the mystery of who you were into my mind. Desperate to solve it, I became a storyteller to myself, the tales I created about you evolving as I grew up and changed.

At five, I turned you into a pair of fairy-tale folk, conjoined with love for eternity. By the time I was seven, you became eighteen-year-old lovers in the midst of a beautiful wedding with tiny flower girls, much like me, spreading petals at your feet as you sauntered down the church aisle hand in hand, rainbows streaming in through stained glass. I considered eighteen grown-up then: now I realise just how young I made you.

When my world locked down, I worried for you, scared that one or both of you would perish from the unfathomable virus flying around, adding to the terrifying statistics that kept me inside far longer than regulations dictated. My trips past the bus stop dwindled as I avoided any place where other people were. You faded from my mind into the street furniture, abandoned like the adjacent phone box.

I only thought about you once during the next three years; at fifteen, I figured with my teenage understanding that your relationship had been brief. That you probably broke up before the white and caramel coloured-etchings had set. You might not even recognise each other now.

You certainly don’t realise how much your writing changed me, how it sparked my desire to know the final chapter. When I didn’t, it taught me to write the ending myself.

One day, as I came home from college, I saw workers removing the old panels from the bus stop, replacing them with pristine new ones. Realising that your demise was imminent, I took a photo of you on my phone so I will never forget you completely.

You’re gone now. Removed and recycled. The bus stop panels are yet to attract new names.
I never knew either of you. I’ll never know what really happened to you, but because you defaced public property, you spoilt the area and helped me to become who I am.