Some ideas hover just outside spoken words, wobbling like a tightrope before they dare to step off. Strange as it sounds, you happen to be one of those ideas.
I have never figured out why I pinch this pen so late, long after your name has curled into the wallpaper of history. Clocks run in circles, I shall grant that; still, memory sneaks off the minute hand and keeps strolling.
Call it love if you want, or claim it is stubborn fungus; either way, something still gasps below the dirt nobody else can see. A letter like this does not sit in a drawer until you open it; it walks up, taps your shoulder, and refuses to quit.
The hour is hollow.
Moonlight spills onto the floor, thin and shaky, as though the light itself is trying to remember the story it forgot. The air hangs quiet, almost embarrassed, waiting for a sneeze or a laugh that never shows. I flick a match to a candle, not because the room is black, but because you always liked to see what you were dealing with. You deserve that flame, even on the nights when you left me groping around in the shadows.
Where do I start? It is a question so big I almost rolled the page up and tossed it. Maybe the blunt truth will do. I loved you too much, too hard, and that, I suspect, knocked the wind out of me. You did not slide in like a friendly visitor; you crashed like early frost-all sharp edges and white surprise.
You swept through me the way wind bends wheat-tugging and twisting, but somehow leaving the stalks standing up just fine. The moment you vanished, though, I stared at the field inside my chest and knew nothing would grow there the same way.
You never wrote me a contract or even a casual pinky swear. Still, the look you shot my way felt like ink on a legal pad, thick and impossible to erase.
Remember the morning under the almond tree? Neither of us bothered to fill the space with chatter. We just watched the sky, waiting for it to spit out the punch line to a riddle we both felt.
I was too young-or too distracted-to see that some quiet is not peaceful, it was a warning light blinking in slow motion. I heard calm; it turns out I should have heard goodbye.
When you started to go-no, when the leaving began to peel off me in sheets-it wasn\'t dramatic. There was no door slam that Hollywood loves. You just quit answering the blank spaces I saved for you. Gradually, you felt more like rumour than reality, and eventually, you settled into my memory, permanent and untouched.
Betrayal usually shows up in the loudest ways- forged signatures, midnight secrets, that sort of thing. This hurt whispered instead. You vanished like frost on a window the moment sunlight breaks. A cabin I was still nailing together for you; I hammered hope into every stud. Then you slipped out the door and forgot to lock it behind you.
Nobody moves into a house and leaves the door wide open. I keep saying that to the unoccupied rooms, as if the walls will answer me.
Love, in that quiet space, turns into a staring contest where only one pair of eyes stays awake. The other pair has already dozed off, dreaming about worlds they never plan to see with you.
I hunted you around town like a kid chasing fireflies. coffee shop, the library, even mirrors that felt- for a second, like portals. I tried to sprinkle your name into lyrics, pencil it into poems, hum it when strangers passed by. None of that worked. You took the sketch of yourself that only existed beside you and walked away with it, and I was too slow to follow.
Sometimes the ghost I greet at night wears your face, and sometimes it wears mine. I miss you who filled the air. I miss the me who still thought you would fill the air. Those two questions get tangled together, and nobody sorts them out.
Who am I when I hit the snooze button on the memory? Forget who I was five heartbeats ago, forget who you were five heartbeats before that. The gap feels lighter, but it is actually heavier, packed with all the reflections I never get to see again. Losing someone, maybe, is just losing the flashlight they kept trained on your sharpest edges. What you are left with is not a hole; it is a thicket of quiet What is pressing against your ribs.
Was the trouble that my words dropped too softly, like rain that never quite lands?
Maybe the break came because I never quite grew into the person the story wanted me to be.
Still, I picture you slipping through my memories the way sunlight melts over stained glass: pretty, sharp, and never quite touching the pane.
I swear I stopped hunting for you, so that is settled.
What I do chase is the why, the how, the cruel little miracle that knots two lives so close and then yanks them apart until even the string stops twitching.
And sometimes, when the house is too still or the radio is broken, your name climbs back into my head the way dust settles on old books.
Not with guilt. Not flaming-hot want. Just that mild surprise you feel when a once-familiar face drifts through a dream.
You pop up in my world-in the space between a bus stop and a text, in the half-tune rattling in my shower. You are no longer a thunderclap; now you are the low hum of a fridge that I pretend I cannot hear. Once in a while, I catch myself laughing at the silliness of the whole thing. Picture me drafting another note from yesterday, still starting with hey, you. Weird, right? I even slip in we and us like those words still matter. Guess that is the trick love plays; it never agrees to make sense, never checks in before it changes shape, then somehow hands you a mirror you never asked for.
I actually thank the mess the break left behind. Crumbling walls showed me how my insides are framed. Some beams sing when rain swings through the holes, and a couple of stubborn spots hold like steel. One gust of wind reminded me that thick wooden beams taste just like the ache I carry, but sometimes memory coats them in honey.
Listen, sweetheart, this page is not a flare gun meant to pull you back. It is more like a small salute to the guy I used to be. The one who cheered loudly, the one who laid everything down, the one who walked away empty. Oddly enough, he still votes for love even when the lights go out.
So, there it is. Nothing dramatic, really-just proof the flicker lingers.
So I shall walk on. Not toward you. Not away from you. But through the fog of what your love taught me:
That even in the deepest bond, we remain strangers.
That to touch another’s soul is both a miracle and a mistake.
And that nothing, not even love, promises to stay.
Still, if I were to live again, I would find you.
Not to hold you.
But to be reminded, once more, how exquisite it is to fall.
Yours, in quiet anguish and in grateful ruin,
The one who learned to exist through absence.