The Letter Beneath Her Pillow

“The Letter Beneath Her Pillow”

I first saw her on a rainy Tuesday, seated by the café window with raindrops threading down the glass like veins on a fragile heart. She stirred her coffee without drinking it, her gaze fixed on something outside—perhaps a memory. I don’t know what drew me in. Maybe it was her silence in a room full of chatter. Maybe it was the slight tremor in her hand, as though she carried a sorrow too big for her frame. I never believed in love at first sight. But this wasn’t love—it was a haunting.

Her name was Aanya. I didn’t speak to her that day, just watched from across the café, pretending to read. But she came again the next day. And the day after that. Always at the same table, always stirring her coffee and never drinking it. She never smiled. I began to wonder if she was waiting for someone who never arrived.

I gathered the courage on the fourth day. I walked up to her table and asked, “Is this seat taken?” She looked up, startled, like I had broken into a daydream. “It was,” she said softly, “but not anymore.”

We started talking. Carefully, like we were both afraid of waking something up. She was quiet but precise with her words. Every sentence felt chosen, polished by grief. I told her about my love for poetry, how I believed that people are poems in progress. She smiled for the first time. “That’s beautiful,” she said, “but some poems aren’t meant to be finished.”

I didn’t ask what she meant.

Over weeks, our conversations deepened. She told me small things—how she liked to sleep with one earphone in, how she had a scar on her ankle from a bicycle accident, how the smell of cinnamon made her cry. But she never spoke about her past. There was a silence stitched around it, tight and warning.

One night, after I walked her to the train station, she paused before boarding. “You should know something,” she said, “I don’t do forever.” Then she stepped inside, and the doors closed between us.

I couldn’t sleep that night. My mind swam in questions: What did she mean? Was she ill? Married? Running from something—or someone? The mystery wrapped itself around my heart like ivy.

Two months later, I fell in love with her. I didn’t tell her that, not yet. But it hung between us like mist—visible, unspoken.

Then came the night everything changed.

I arrived at the café, but she wasn’t there. I waited an hour. Called. No answer. For three days, she disappeared. I searched every street I knew she loved. I called hospitals. Nothing. Then, on the fourth night, I found an envelope slid under my apartment door.

No name. Just a single line written in delicate handwriting: “Under my pillow, you'll find the truth. I’m sorry.”

I froze. Her pillow?

I had never been to her apartment. But I remembered her mentioning once that she lived near St. Mary’s Church, in a white building with purple bougainvillea hanging over the gate.

I found it after midnight. The door was unlocked. Inside was silence, dust, and a faint scent of lavender. Her bed was neatly made. I reached beneath the pillow.

There it was.

A letter, folded thrice. I opened it with shaking hands.


“If you’re reading this, it means I’ve broken my own promise. I swore I wouldn’t drag anyone into my past. But you deserve truth.

I had a fiancé once. Aarav. He was everything—kind, brilliant, reckless in love. We were engaged, planning our wedding in December. One evening, we had a fight. A stupid fight about work. He stormed out. It was raining, and he was driving too fast.

He never made it past the bridge.

I was supposed to be in the car too. But I stayed behind. He died. I lived. That night cursed me.

I’ve lived in guilt ever since. The café you met me in? That was our place. I kept returning like a ritual. Hoping that if I sat still enough, time would rewind.

Then you came. With your poetry and your quiet eyes. You began to stitch me back together without even knowing it. I tried to push you away. But I failed.

I don’t know if I can love again. But if I could, it would be you.

I’m going away for a while. Not to vanish. Just to breathe. To try and forgive myself. If you still want me when I return, I’ll be at the café. On the first rain of September. Same seat. Same time.

But if you don’t come, I’ll understand. Some poems, after all, aren’t meant to be finished.”

I didn’t cry. Not then. Just sat on the floor, letter trembling in my hands, as if it carried her heartbeat.

September felt like a century away.

But I waited.

And on the first rain of September, I went to the café. My heart was louder than the thunder. The chair was empty when I arrived. For twenty minutes, I thought she had changed her mind.

Then she walked in.

No umbrella. Hair soaked. Eyes nervous and shining.

She sat across from me. This time, she drank her coffee.

We didn’t speak for a long time. We just looked at each other—two broken verses finding rhyme again.

And in that moment, I knew.

Some poems are meant to begin twice.