Almost, My Almost: A Ghost Love in Four Acts

The Poem of Loss

"Almost, My Almost"

They say grief has five stages, but no one warns you about the sixth: the haunting of 'almost'. That limbo between love and loss where every memory wears two faces - what was and what could have been. This is where I live now, in the museum of our nearly-was, where even the air smells of interrupted futures.

The white kurta still hangs in my closet, the price tag dangling like a question mark. You bought it that Diwali when the streets smelled of jalebis and possibility. "Wear this tomorrow," you'd said, and I did—for three years straight, until the stitching frayed at the shoulders where your hands never rested.

You were the cup of tea after long rains,

steam curling like promises I mistook for forever.

I saved the receipt. Not the money kind—the other one. The unprinted tab of your care: 2am voice notes about your father’s temper, the way you’d save me the last Gulab jamun at parties, your eyelashes fluttering when you lied. I collected this like currency, blind to the inflation of hope.

Do you remember when we got caught in the monsoon rain that August? We took shelter under the jeweler's awning, watching gold necklaces glint behind glass while water soaked through our shoes. You said, "One day..." and didn't finish. I filled that silence with dreams of our wedding. Now I realize you were probably just admiring the 22-carat mangalsutra we'd never need.

You were the festival clothes bought without asking...,

The first silence lasted 11 days. I counted. You broke it with a meme about cats—no explanation, just a flicker of normalcy that scalded more than soothed. When I asked about the proposal (the one I’d whispered under neem trees), you turned your phone camera away, showing me the ceiling instead of your face.

That ceiling became my universe for months - cracked plaster mapping constellations of your excuses. I studied them like an astronomer desperate for signs: if I found the right pattern, maybe I could predict when you'd look at me again. The stars never answered.

"I’m tired" you said. The words hung like a blade. I didn’t know then you were already trying on red saris in another timeline.

The late-night voice that said "I trust you"

with secrets heavy as wedding vows.

I built altars in the silence between us,

where your laughter was the only hymn, I needed.

Then—

the unanswered proposal,

the slow suffocation of distance,

the cruel arithmetic of comparison:

"He is just a little more handsome."

"Now your name haunts my phone—

just ‘Instagram User’ in cold, generic font...,

I learned about the engagement from your cousin’s WhatsApp status. You wore peonies in your hair—the same flowers you’d once said were "too bridal" when I pointed them out at the market. The math was simple: he had a Honda Civic, a government job, and cheekbones that didn’t falter in golden hour. I had a heart you’d packed away like off-season clothes.

Last month, I passed your mother at the temple. She hugged me with arms that knew too much, her bangles clinking like wind chimes in a storm.

In our tradition, broken glass is swept away immediately - it's bad luck to let the shards linger. But no one teaches you how to clean up shattered expectations. The fragments of us are still everywhere: in the WhatsApp groups I can't leave, the wedding invitations that still come to my parents' address, the way I instinctively reach for my phone at 11:03 PM before remembering your voice now belongs to someone else's nights.

"Was I just practice?"

The question hangs like a broken necklace...

I keep the last photo we took—your elbow brushing mine at Rahul’s wedding—as a reminder: some loves are sand mandalas. Beautiful until the wind claims them. That kurta? I gave it to a beggar last winter. He asked if it was silk. I didn’t tell him it was something rarer: proof I’d once been chosen, if only briefly.

Tell me: Have you ever loved someone who became a stranger in the same body?

Some say time heals, but that's a lie for loves like ours. Time just teaches you to limp better. The wound remains, you just learn to predict the weather changes in your bones. That kurta's gone now, but its ghost still brushes against my skin sometimes when I pass that Diwali market, where the jalebis still smell the same but no one stops to ask, "Do you want the last piece?

If you see her, ask which hurts more—the leaving, or the lying about not having left already?