We Were Lovers Before Light - Novel

Dedication

For Her,

Who Forgot She's Beautiful

You think you're not special

but you are stardust with a heartbeat.

You feel incomplete

but I’ve never seen wholeness wear a face so gently.

You doubt your worth

yet your silence holds light than the sun at noon.

You shrink your soul

but it could outgrow galaxies if only you let it.

So here, take this book

a promise folded in verse.

I’ll leave flowers where you feel empty,

and plant kindness in the cracks you hide.

I’ll kiss the thoughts that haunt you,

and hold your fears like fragile glass.

If you let me,

I’ll remind you every day

you were made of the very things the stars envy.

The Day Before Rain

July 7, A Summer That Waited

Two days ago, I told her I want to see you.

And when will you make custard or biryani for me?

She laughed and said yes, I will.

Maybe it sounds small, but that yes was enough. I held onto it like a thread. I made it my excuse. So, I said can you come tomorrow? Because I miss you. Because it’s been too long. Because I want to see you, hug you, kiss you, sit beside you. Just sit. Talk. Listen. Anything.

And she said yes.

Not for the same day, but the day after.

It’s going to rain tomorrow, she said.

And it’s Sunday. I want to come in the rain, not in this harsh sunlight.

So, I said OKAY, fine, come in the rain. And I started waiting.

Here’s the thing about time: it flies when you don’t care. These last few weeks have gone by so fast, like they were never really here. Life has been busy. Loud. Exhausting. But the moment you start waiting for someone, someone you love, time changes. Seconds turn to minutes. Minutes stretch like rubber bands. Hours feel like whole days. And I waited.

I waited because she said yes.

And her yes… it does something to me. In this life full of pain, mess, chaos, her yes is the only thing that makes sense.

You know what I always want to say to her?

That nothing in this world makes me happier than knowing she’s on her way to me. That in this life of broken days and restless nights, her arrival feels like everything suddenly remembers how to breathe.

When she says let’s meet, the heaviness in my chest disappears. The ache in my bones goes quiet. The noise in my head fades. She makes everything still. Everything soft. Everything light.

When it comes to her, I don’t think, I just live.

It feels like my whole life was designed around her steps, her voice, her coming and going.

And now, as the sun burns down on this hot July afternoon, I sit in the middle of it, holding onto that promise of rain.

Not just the rain outside. But the rain that comes with her.

Because she doesn’t just bring weather.

She brings life.

And I wait.

And I write.

And I hope she comes.