I was born from the absence. Each door shut with a lock, a mirror reflecting back, and the quiet of the room becoming a verdict of my time. So I begin to orbit around like a moon, grasping for gravity just to stay near. I beg for pull, the proof that I still matter, even when I’m not in the room. I ask more questions than a survey. Not because I’m trying to pry, but because I’m throwing my anchor overboard. Stitching myself into the moments between us, before even the moment itself forgets it existed. And yet, I still notice. The shifts you make beneath my weight. The way the joy across your face tightens when I ask once more, Where have you been? Who all was there? What was I not included in? It’s as if smoke is filling my lungs, and I blame the room if it slips through. I want to know all that I can, because once, I knew nothing. And that nothingness hollowed me out, left me so quiet I echo when I’m left alone in the silence for too long. I see how I steal your breath when you try to breathe. How your time gets stretched thin by my persistent questions, my mere presence,
this velvet desperation for belonging so complete you’ll forget I ever even asked. But I’ll probably still ask. I always seem to ask. Because when I think of it, if I’m not fully part of the moment, was I ever really there?

I loved her more fiercely than I ever intended to love again. Not because she asked me to, but because something within me needed to. As if some part of my soul recognized hers, and begged to give her everything. Like an angel descending into the ruins of my heart, whispering to try again. And so I did. I gave her pieces of myself I’d sworn I’d never share again. My aches, my trembling truths, the wounds I thought had long since closed, but she kissed them open. I began building a future with hands still shaking from the past, tracing blueprints of us across her skin. I told myself this was safe, even as the ground cracked beneath our feet. I tried to be careful, but she made recklessness feel like hope. I let her too close. Now, where her love once lived, there’s only silence. She left, not like a storm, but like a sunrise slipping away before I could hold onto its warmth. Like a page torn from a book mid-sentence. Now I sit here, love still blooming with nowhere to go. It hums in my chest like a song with no singer, a fire slowly fading without fuel. I never meant to love again. Never meant to need again. But I did, somehow slipping through the cracks. And now, I don’t know how to stop.

Don’t tell me you love me if the weight of who I am makes you flinch. If the fractured parts of me send you running instead of reaching. You say your heart is mine, but only when it’s effortless, when I’m glowing, when I’m easy to love, when I’m bleeding quietly behind a proud smile. Where were you when I shattered in silence? When my eyes pleaded for even the smallest reason to stay afloat? You’re in love with the idea of who I could be, the version that doesn’t question, that doesn’t ache, that asks for nothing. But love doesn’t live in words. It lives in quiet hands pulling someone closer when walking away would be easier. So don’t say you love me if you can’t stand still when the fire starts. If you vanish when things get real, it’ll hurt less to let you go. Maybe you never loved me, just the echo of someone I never was.

The distance doomed us from the beginning. Not just the miles, but the silence stretched between us, cold and unrelenting, like winter air between hands that once held warmth. You were a lighthouse, and I was a ship adrift, you showed me the way, but I was never meant to reach you. Every call felt like a prayer cast into a void, your voice flickering like candlelight, first dim, then gone. Your texts sit saved like sacred love letters, scriptures I read in the dark, pretending that longing alone could be the foundation for a life. But space grew teeth. It started small, gnawing at the little things: your laugh echoing in the still of night, your touch when words failed, your breath against my skin as you slept beside me. Then you began to fade, like a photograph left too long in the sun, still beautiful, still bright, but every glance brought more blur, especially in the places I needed you most. I keep reaching, but my hands close around air. You can’t kiss a memory, can’t build a future on a signal that always drops. So here I lie, not with anger, not with closure, just the quiet understanding that distance was always the silent killer.

Maybe I wasn’t made to be loved, at least not in the soft, quiet way that sunlight slips through a window, warming the air as it gently stirs the morning awake. Maybe I’m the kind that comes alive in the dead of night, like a storm crashing against the sea, fierce, unrelenting, too wild to stay. I’ve tried folding myself into arms not shaped to hold me, twisting like origami into spaces that never fit. I’ve written lullabies hoping to soothe, only to be met with silence, like they were never heard at all. It’s not that I don’t feel love, I feel it deeply. But I give until I overflow, until the pressure builds and the dam breaks, leaving ruins where something beautiful used to be. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be someone’s peace. Maybe I was meant to be the ache they carry in their chest, the lesson, the turning point, the reminder of what they didn’t realize they had until it was too late.

Someday, I will die. No matter how long I try to postpone it, my life will come to an end, not in a blaze of glory or a thunderous finale, but in a quiet stillness, like the tide slipping back into the sea. But before that day comes, I will have lived, not just existed, but truly lived. I will have laughed and cried over things both deeply meaningful and entirely trivial. I will have held silence in my hands and shaped it into peace. I will have known pain, not once or twice but endlessly, and though the wounds may not fully disappear, I will have healed enough to rise again. I will have looked into the mirror, sometimes despising the reflection, sometimes marveling at the strength behind my own eyes. I will have carried grief, heavy and necessary, shaping me into something real. I will have failed, publicly and privately, but never stopped trying, not because I had to, but because something inside me refused to give up. I will have learned to forgive myself, not with dramatic proclamations, but with small, quiet choices to keep moving. I will have loved, imperfectly but wholeheartedly, and even when heartbreak came, I will have walked away with trembling hands and a lifted head. I will have created things, maybe odd or unimpressive, but they’ll be mine, understood if only by me. I will have stayed up through the night, whispering truths into the dark, staring up at the stars until they whispered back. I will have grown and changed into someone I never imagined, and I will have let go of things I once thought I couldn’t live without. And when the final moment comes, I hope I don’t claw at the pages, desperate to rewrite the past, but instead smile, knowing every line, even the painful ones, mattered. Someday my story will end, but I won’t disappear. I will echo in everything that made me, me.

I just want to love you again. I trace your name in my sighs through the night, a melody lost to time, hushed by regret, yet I still hum it through the pain. And I always will. The crisp air still smells like yesterday, carrying echoes of laughter clasped between our locked hands. Like the promises we swore would never break, only misplaced, leaving space where we once stood together. I don’t long for time to rewind; I want to love you now, with the lessons our mistakes have taught me. I hate these shackles on our hearts, the restraints that make even the smallest things feel fragile. I’ve fallen for you, and I fall again each time I try to stay away. I love it all, the good, the bad, even the fights that teach us something new. Even in our lowest moments, I still search for you. I can’t be just friends with you. I’m sorry, but I can’t compartmentalize this love. I don’t care about perfection; I care about presence, about loving you fully, no matter the effort it takes. And I always will, even if I’m not allowed to. From the sound of your voice to the hue of your presence, to every piece of you, I will always love you.