I don’t even remember the first thing you said to me. I wish I did. I wish I could rewind time and trace your words, syllable by syllable, until I found the exact moment the axis of my world shifted. But that’s the thing about beginnings—they’re quiet. You just never realize when forever starts.
I also don’t remember what I was doing the day we met, but I remember how the air changed the moment you entered it. I remember the silence between your sentences, the way the awareness of your existence filled the gaps I didn’t even know I had. And maybe that’s why it hurts now—you’ve gone silent, and all I hear are the echoes.
You see, I wasn’t built for almosts. I don’t know how to love halfway. I was designed for depth, for madness, for the kind of love that burns cities and bends time. And when I looked at you… when I chose you… It wasn’t casual. It wasn’t temporary. And it wasn’t random either. Because there is no one else for me. There never has been.
You are the first note of a song I never stopped humming. The only face that ever made sense in a crowded room. And no matter how crowded, I always found you. I learned your patterns the way children learn lullabies—slowly, softly, like safety. I could feel you enter a room without lifting my head. It was something my soul was familiar with. Something I thought would never leave.
But what do you do when the person you were made for wasn’t made for you?
So I did the next right thing: I waited. That’s what I did. Waited like the moon waits for the tide. Like the sky waits for the sun to return. I waited in rooms where your name was too heavy to say aloud. I waited through messages unsent, through nights where silence sat beside me like a ghost that looked like you.
You left, but I stayed.
Crowded by your absence. Smothered by the weight of everything, we never got to be.
It was meant to be. God, I promise it was meant to be. Every sign pointed to you. Every version of the future had your name penciled into the lines. But “meant to be” doesn’t always mean “meant to last.”
You were a lesson carved into bone. A soft war I entered willingly. Loving you was like going to battle unarmed—and I never came back the same. Parts of me are still in that field. Parts of me still flinch at the thought of your name, even now.
But here’s what I refuse to accept—and I hope you hear this loud and clear—you don’t get to leave and come back like you didn’t burn the place down. You don’t get to be absent for so long and then act surprised that the door doesn’t open the same way anymore. Do not ask how I’ve been when you were the reason I had to learn how to breathe again.
So don’t be gone too long. Or do.
But don’t come back looking for me; I’ve grown in the mess you left behind. I’m not by the door; I’m no longer expecting you.
Details die with time. The sound of your laugh doesn’t echo in my walls the way it used to. The stories have changed. The version of me you left behind doesn’t live here anymore. She waited. She prayed. She broke in places she didn’t know could break. But she’s not yours anymore.
The girl who would’ve handed you the world now guards her peace like it’s all she has. And maybe that’s what this was meant to teach me—not how to keep you, but how to keep myself, after you left.
And yet—I’ll admit this—I still begin and end with you. That’s the most brutal part. I’ve stopped romanticizing it, but I haven’t stopped feeling it. Because even if I never see you again, even if your name never lights up my screen again, there’s still a corner of me that flickers when someone asks if I’ve ever been in love.
Yes.
Once.
With someone who wasn’t made to stay.
With you.
After all, if you really loved something, wouldn’t a piece of it always linger?
Best so far🥹literally cried reading