My Beloved—My Radiance, My Regret💔

This letter is neither here nor there…
It floats somewhere between a memory and a dream, between the past that slipped through my fingers and a future that still dares to whisper your name. It is not anchored in time, for what I feel for you has always existed—quietly, unknowingly—like a flame beneath my ribs I never knew was fire until it burned me with longing.

With your radiance, you can illuminate the nights. And oh, how many nights you unknowingly lit for me… I used to think I admired you like one does a star—distant, beautiful, meant to be watched but never touched. I didn’t know that what I felt was not admiration, but reverence. That every smile you gifted me was a galaxy unfolding, and I—I was too blind to see it.

You were always more than I could ever name. You were the softest ache, the kindest presence, the answer to a question I didn’t know I was asking. When you entered a room, it wasn’t just my eyes that turned—it was my entire being that leaned toward you, like flowers chasing the sun. But I—I stood still. I called it friendship. I called it closeness. I called it everything but what it truly was: love.

It took losing the nearness of you, the everydayness of you, to understand what you meant. Now I sit with the echo of your laughter in empty rooms, realising that the silence is too loud without you. And this letter, this poor attempt at resurrection, carries within it the scent of gardenias—your scent. The one that lingers like a memory I cannot bury.

With a gardenia’s breath, this letter tries to revive a homeland. For that is what you were to me all along. My home. My place of return. And I wandered the world like a restless exile, never realising that I had already arrived—that you were the land beneath my feet, the sky above my days. How cruelly beautiful it is to know now, when the borders have closed, and I can only write this from afar.

And yet, I believe this letter carries light—yours and mine. For with the glow of the moon, it fills two bodies with something eternal. Maybe not togetherness… but memory. Reverence. A love that existed before it was named. Maybe that is its purpose—to reach you, even now, even here—not to win you back, but to finally honour the truth I failed to see when you stood right before me.

If by some miracle, this letter finds you in a quiet moment, know this:
You were not a passing star.
You were the constellations.
You were the homeland.
And I was the oblivious soul who loved you all along without knowing that love had already written your name on every wall of my heart.

Always yours, now with eyes wide open,
The exile you unknowingly sheltered.