All the Time We Lost By Ishfaq Ali

We never had a real ending.

No final words.

No fight. No closure.

Just time — slipping by, unnoticed, until the space between us grew wider than memory could reach.

You were once my favorite story to share.

Now, you're a chapter I read in silence, one I don't talk about, but often think about. In the quiet moments, I still hear the echoes of who we used to be.

We met during that messy, in-between time of life.

Not fully grown, but not still young. It was autumn — our favorite season, even if we never said it out loud. You said it was because of the colors. I think we both knew it was because everything in fall is beautiful just before it disappears.

You loved moments.

Not big events. You'd sit with me on rooftops just to count the city lights. You said the stars felt closer up there. Maybe that's why I always felt like I could be myself around you. Like I didn’t need to impress anyone, not even myself.

We weren’t good at making plans.

We promised forever but never thought about what came next. We thought being there was enough. Maybe for a while, it was.

But time is tricky.

It doesn’t tell you it's leaving.

It just… stops showing up.

You got busy.

I got distracted. We both got tired. Not of each other — at least not at first — but of trying to hold something together with only one hand each.

There wasn’t one moment that broke us.

No betrayal, no lie. Just a slow fading away. Like sand slipping through fingers. You never notice the last grain until your hand is empty.

We went from talking every day to once a week, then once a month.

Our silences started to speak louder than our words. I told myself it was okay. That growing apart was natural. That we were just on different paths. But late at night, when my guard was down, I scrolled through our old messages, trying to find the moment we stopped being “us. ”

The worst part?

You didn’t leave.

You just faded.

There were still birthday messages and holiday texts.

Still occasional “just checking in” messages. But the warmth was gone. It was like hugging a memory.

One day, I sat down and tried to write you a message.

“I miss you.

That was how it started.

But how do you put an entire history into one text?

How do you explain that you’re grieving someone who’s still alive?

I never sent it.

Instead, I saved it in my drafts.

I told myself it didn’t matter. That people outgrow each other. That the past is the past for a reason. But that wasn’t entirely true, was it?

Because the past doesn’t always stay in the past.

Sometimes it lingers — in songs, in smells, in places where laughter once lived.

I saw your favorite book in a store window last week.

*The Unbearable Lightness of Being. * I froze. For a second, I thought I might cry. Not because of the book. But because of what it reminded me of — those evenings when you read passages out loud and underlined words that “felt true. ”

I wonder if you still do that — underline truth.

I wonder if someone else hears you read now.

Sometimes I think we didn’t lose each other.

We just lost the versions of ourselves that only existed together. You were the softer parts of me. The braver parts. The parts that believed in love that didn’t need constant proof.

And I think I was that for you, too.

A mirror for the goodness you tried to hide.

We built a world together, quiet and fleeting.

And while the world didn’t last, its echoes remain. In the way I still drink my coffee — black, no sugar, just how you liked it. In the way I still flinch when someone says your name, like I’m expecting you to walk in behind it.

We don’t get closure from people like you.

We get lessons.

We get poetry.

We get stories no one else understands.

You were never meant to be permanent.

But you were always meant to be important.

And now, all I can do is honor what we were.

So, here it is.

The message I never sent. The goodbye I never gave.

I miss you.

Not just who you were. But who I was with you.

I miss the time we thought we had.

The space we never filled.

The silence that followed.

We didn’t just lose each other.

We lost the chance to see what we could’ve been.

We lost the ordinary days we didn’t know would matter most.

We lost the time — quietly, slowly, and without realizing we were giving it away.

But for what it’s worth…

Thank you.

For showing me that some people don’t stay, but still leave love behind.

And for reminding me that time isn’t just what we spend — it’s what we give.