Fifteen years gone, and the Landmark hasn’t changed much — just grown a thicker skin. The wood’s darker, the air heavier with old laughter that long ago burned down to embers. The lights still hang low and tired, throwing a yellow hush over the bottles like a kind of mercy. Nobody looks up when I come in; they’ve got their own ghosts to tend. I take a stool that might as well have been waiting for me, though it doesn’t feel that way. The bartender pours for strangers and regulars alike, and I’m neither. Outside, Raleigh moves slow and sure — a town that doesn’t chase much, doesn’t have to. In here, time folds in on itself, and I sit with a beer, feeling like I’ve slipped between the pages of something that was finished long ago. No one knows I’m back, and that’s just fine. Some places aren’t for being seen — they’re for remembering who you were when no one was watching.
