WHERE YOU LEFT ME

You found me on a quiet, moonlit night, a time so soft it felt like a sigh. The stars hung low in a sky so deep it seemed endless, and I looked at you and felt the weight of forever press into my chest. In that quiet, you held my hand as though you’d never let go, fingers interwoven with mine like threads that could not be unraveled. You told me that we had time, that there would be mornings and evenings, laughter, warmth, the kind of life you read about but hardly dare to believe is real. And with my heart trembling, I believed you.

We carved our dreams together beneath that starlit sky, letting the universe bear witness to our hopes, our whispered promises. We told each other stories of our future—shared years, endless days, the little moments that would make us a home. I thought that somehow, together, we were untouchable. That our love was the kind that the world would yield to, making space for us to unfold, unbothered, unbroken.

But fate is swift, and it is cold, and it does not listen to the quiet prayers of two lovers beneath the stars. It found you with its silent hands, took you as the dawn light began to creep into the room, leaving me in a darkness I could never have imagined. You were there, warm beside me, and then—gone. I reached for you, my fingers brushing only stillness, a silence so profound it felt like a scream. And in that emptiness, I knew. I knew that forever was only a breath, and that you had been taken from me as easily as light fades from a flame.

Now, I wander through empty rooms, spaces that feel haunted by the memory of you. Every corner whispers your name, every shadow holds your face. I close my eyes and hear the echo of your laugh, so vivid it feels like I could reach out and grasp it, pull it back into my arms. But when I reach, my hands find nothing but air, and the ache in my chest becomes a thing of its own, a hollowed-out chasm that echoes with everything we will never have.

I sit on the edge of the bed we shared, holding your sweater, its worn threads tangled in my fingers like the last of your touch. I breathe in its fading scent, the remnants of you, as if inhaling it could fill my lungs with the life we dreamed of together. They tell me time will ease this, that the pain will soften, that memories will turn sweet. But they do not know the weight of a love so suddenly cut short, the way it fills every quiet moment, pressing down with the force of everything unsaid, unfulfilled.

I go through the motions of my days, a shadow of who I was with you, a fractured version of the person who once laughed freely, who believed in tomorrows. I am here, and you are somewhere I cannot reach, a place beyond even the brightest of dreams. And I want to tell you, just one more time, that you were my heart, that you filled every empty place within me, that you were not only loved but cherished with a fierceness that still blazes in the depths of my soul.

If I could trade my breath for yours, if there were any way to cross the chasm that separates us now, I would let go of all I have left to touch you one last time. To see your face, to hold your hand, to whisper goodbye, to say the words that now cling to the silence like shadows.

But here I am, my love—only me, left with words that can no longer reach you, with dreams that have become hollow echoes, with a heart that beats in fragments. I look out at the world, too bright and vast for what remains of me, and I know that somehow, I must find a way to go on, carrying your memory like a candle against the darkness.