The night folds in around me,
like the hem of a curtain,
gathering darkness,
clinging to the edges of the room.
I feel your absence thick in the air,
heavier than the silence
that fills the space you once breathed in.
Your touch lingers—
not in the warmth of your hand
but in the cold, where it used to rest,
a hollow in my chest,
an echo of fingers tracing skin
now left to fade,
like dust in a forgotten corner.
Love shouldn’t feel like this,
but it does.
The clock ticks louder than it ever did before,
each second a nail is driven deeper
into the wall between us.
Time was never a friend to lovers,
but it was a stranger
until you left.
Separation now stalks me,
its shadow curling long across the floor,
reminding me how little of it we shared,
How much of it would I spend without you?
I imagine you beneath a sky that isn’t mine,
stars hanging like unfamiliar punctuation
in a story, we never finished.
Do you look at them the same way,
as if they could speak for us,
bridge the chasm
Do we keep falling into it?
I’d ask,
but words feel thin,
too brittle to survive the miles between us.
Distance is a thief,
stealing not just moments,
but pieces of us.
I try to remember the sound of your voice,
how it curled around my name,
soft, deliberate,
like a promise you didn’t need to keep,
because we believed in it forever.
But forever has edges now,
sharp, jagged,
tearing at the seams of what we once were.
I can almost feel you still,
the phantom press of your lips
against my neck,
whispered confessions
that used to make the world smaller,
closer.
Now, all I have are shadows of your breath,
cold where it was once warm,
faint where it was once inevitable.
The nights stretch on like roads,
endless, winding,
with no signs to tell me how far
I’ll be sure to find you again.
And I wonder if you’ll still be the same,
if I’ll still recognize the way
your hands trace the lines of my body
like you’re reading a map
you’ve traveled a thousand times before.
Or if we’ll be strangers,
relearning the language of each other’s skin,
stumbling over vowels and consonants
we used to speak fluently.
Love wasn’t supposed to be this quiet,
but here we are,
sitting in the stillness,
waiting for the noise of reunion,
for the rush of your heartbeat
against mine,
for the friction of two lives
that used to fit like puzzle pieces,
now scattered,
edges worn,
trying to find their way back together.
Sometimes I dream of you,
but in the dreams,
your face is blurred,
like a painting left too long in the rain,
colors bleeding together,
soft and shapeless.
I reach out,
but my fingers pass through you,
and I wake with the taste of your name
on my lips,
but it’s not enough.
It’s never enough.
I press my hand against the window,
cold glass,
a poor substitute for your skin,
but I close my eyes
and pretend it’s you,
pretend the miles don’t stretch on forever,
pretend that love can bridge this distance.
Because love,
despite everything,
is the one thing
I still believe in it.
I hold on to that belief,
clutch it tight
as if it could keep me warm
in this empty bed.
I hold on to it
because I have nothing else.
And I hope,
hope that love will bring you back to me,
hope that one day
we’ll stand face to face again,
and the world will fold itself into our arms,
small and quiet,
the way it used to be
before the distance,
before the silence,
before the longing
became louder than the love.
But until then,
I wait.
For poetry and more, visit Mecella.