She Left a Note on My Pillow

It started with coffee

Every morning, she brewed two cups one for me, one for her leaving them on the small wooden table by the window, where the sun painted golden rectangles on the floor. We weren’t perfect. But we were real. Her name was Leena, and in the quiet rhythm of life, she became my constant.

I met her in the rain literally. She was stranded at a bus stop without an umbrella, and I offered mine. She never gave it back. Said it was hers now, just like my mornings, my playlists, and eventually, my heart.

For two years, we lived in that small apartment on 12th Street. We argued about dishes, binged murder documentaries, talked about maybe adopting a cat one day. But Leena… she always had a sadness in her. A kind of distant storm she never let me walk into.

She used to say things like:

"If one day I just vanish… don’t look for me. Just remember me in the sunlight."

I thought it was poetry. Or drama.

Now I think it was a warning.

The day she disappeared started like any other

Her side of the bed was cold when I woke up. Odd, but not alarming. I figured she went for an early walk. But when I walked into the kitchen, there was no coffee. No sunlight. No sound.

Only a folded piece of paper on my pillow.

I stared at it for minutes, afraid to touch it. Somehow, I knew once I read it, everything would change.

The note was handwritten, in her favorite ink pen:

“Don’t be angry. I tried to stay. But the darkness inside me never sleeps, and I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t exist. I need to go before it eats everything I love including you. Please don’t come looking.

I love you. I always did.”

Leena

I ran. To the neighbors. To the streets. I called hospitals, police stations. I filed a missing person report, even though her note made it clear she didn’t want to be found.

No one had seen her.

No cameras caught her leaving.

No phone activity.

No social media.

Nothing.

It was like she evaporated into the wind.

Weeks passed. Then months

The apartment felt haunted. Not by ghosts, but by the echo of someone who once filled every room.

I kept thinking I’d wake up and see her again, sitting on the couch with her chipped mug and oversized sweater. But the only thing that greeted me was silence.

Her toothbrush remained by the sink. Her books gathered dust. I couldn’t throw anything away. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Sometimes, I thought I saw her on the street. A flash of her coat. Her walk. Her laugh. But it was always someone else.

It’s been a year

People told me to move on.

But how do you move on from someone who vanished with half your soul?

Then last week, I found something strange.

Inside her favorite novel a book I’d somehow never opened since she left was another note.

“If you found this, it means you're still listening for me. That’s love, isn’t it? I wish I could’ve stayed. I wish the world had been kinder to people like me.

Forgive me. Please.”

There was no date. No signature.

Just pain, pressed into paper.

I still don’t know where she went. Or why she couldn’t let me help her fight whatever darkness she was carrying.

But every morning now, I make two cups of coffee. I leave one by the window. Just in case.

And sometimes, when the light hits just right, I swear I hear her humming in the hallway.

What would you do if someone you loved vanished by choice and asked you never to look for them?

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