Letters to the Universe

Letters to the Universe

By [Ali Rehman]

Every night, she wrote to the universe.

Not to a god, nor to a person — but to that vast, invisible expanse that stretched beyond the stars. She didn’t expect answers, didn’t ask for miracles. She only wanted to be heard.

Mira sat by her window, her desk cluttered with pages that smelled of ink and hope. The city outside hummed with sleepless noise — the sound of engines, sirens, and people chasing tomorrows they didn’t understand. But in her little room, time stood still.

The first letter she ever wrote was simple.

“Dear Universe,

I hope you still remember me. I’m the girl who looks up every night but doesn’t know what she’s looking for.”

She folded it carefully, sealed it with a sigh, and placed it on the windowsill where the moonlight could read it.

She had started this ritual after her mother died. The world had gone silent after that — not peaceful, but hollow. People told her time would heal, that life would go on, that one day she’d wake up and the ache would dull. But they didn’t tell her how to survive in between.

So she wrote.

Every night, her pen became a telescope — reaching past the clouds, past grief, past gravity. Her handwriting was messy, her words tender and raw, but she filled those pages as if the stars themselves were listening.

Sometimes she wrote about small things — a stray cat that followed her home, the smell of old books, the sound of rain tapping on her window like gentle applause. Other nights, she confessed deeper things.

“Dear Universe,

Today I didn’t cry when I passed her favorite café. That’s progress, right?”

“Dear Universe,

If everything happens for a reason, why does silence sound like guilt?”

“Dear Universe,

I’m tired of pretending I’m okay.”

She never mailed the letters, of course. She simply folded them into tiny paper stars and dropped them into a glass jar. Over time, the jar became heavy — a galaxy of all the things she could never say out loud.

One night, when the sky was particularly clear, Mira climbed up to the rooftop. The city looked endless below her — a maze of lights, each window a life she didn’t know but somehow felt connected to. She carried her jar of letters with her, holding it close as if it were her heart.

She unscrewed the lid and whispered,

“I’ve been writing to you for years, you know. I don’t know if you’ve ever listened. But if you have… thank you for keeping my words safe.”

Then she opened the jar.

The wind caught the paper stars and carried them upward, spinning them like fireflies made of dreams. For a moment, the sky seemed to shimmer back — faintly, softly — as if the universe was exhaling.

The next morning, something strange happened.

When she looked out her window, one of her paper stars had returned. It rested gently on her windowsill, untouched by rain or wind. She picked it up, and her heart skipped — it wasn’t blank.

Someone — or something — had written back.

“Dear Mira,

I’ve been listening since your first letter. Every time you looked up, I looked back.

You are not small. You are made of the same dust that makes me.

You are my echo.”

Her hands trembled. The handwriting was unfamiliar, curling and silver, as if written with moonlight itself. She read it again and again until her tears blurred the words.

That night, she wrote one more letter.

“Dear Universe,

You have no idea how much that meant. I thought I was alone. But maybe loneliness is just love waiting to be seen.”

She smiled as she placed it on the sill. The air felt different — lighter, alive, like her words were being gathered by invisible hands.

Days passed. The letters continued. And every so often, one would return — always signed the same way:

“—The Universe”

The replies were never grand or cosmic. They were gentle, almost human.

“Dear Mira,

You are healing. You just haven’t noticed it yet.”

“Dear Mira,

The moon misses your laughter.”

“Dear Mira,

Sometimes the only way to be found is to stop hiding from your own light.”

And one night, she realized something profound — perhaps the universe wasn’t some distant entity at all. Perhaps it was the part of her that still believed. The part that refused to give up, that spoke back through dreams, wind, and courage.

Perhaps she had been answering herself all along.

Years later, when Mira grew old, she kept writing — not out of sadness, but out of love. The jar of stars became a symbol of her life’s story, each one a fragment of her journey toward healing.

Children in her neighborhood often saw her sitting by the window, humming to the stars. When they asked what she was doing, she’d smile and say,

“I’m writing to the universe. You should try it sometime. It always writes back.”

And on the night she finally left this world, the sky over her house bloomed with shooting stars — as if the universe was sending its final reply.

Moral:

When you speak to the universe, you’re really speaking to the part of yourself that still believes in light. The universe doesn’t always answer in words — sometimes it answers in stars, in silence, or in the courage to keep going.