This isn't about another guy.
This is about the girl.
The girl with whom the cold winter wind felt like home.
Us holding hands.
Walking towards our spot.
Thinking the world could end tomorrow and somehow we would still have each other.
The girl.
The girl who wasn't my best friend.
Because she was always something more terrifying than that.
She was certainty.
She was the person I never imagined losing.
My biggest fear was losing her.
And maybe that's why I felt it before it happened.
The pauses.
The distance.
The feeling of reaching for her
and touching air.
I knew.
God, I knew.
I knew one day I would lose her.
But I thought not yet.
Not us.
Not her.
So I loved her carelessly.
Like she was permanent.
Like I had time.
I kept every message.
Every picture.
Every memory.
As if memories could stop someone from leaving.
As if love could make a person stay.
I still remember the kiss she pressed against my hand every time we said goodbye.
I wonder if she remembers it too.
Or if I am the only one
haunted.
How did we become strangers?
How did someone who knew the sound of my laugh, the shape of my fears, the stories behind my scars,
become someone who knows nothing about me now?
How do you lose a person
who once felt more familiar than your own reflection?
Was it love?
Maybe.
Was it a soulmate?
Maybe.
I only know that sometimes I miss her so much
it feels like grief.
Not the loud kind.
The quiet kind.
The kind that sits in your chest
for years.
The kind that follows you home.
The kind that wakes up when you hear a song.
When you pass a place.
When winter arrives.
I only know that some nights
I remember who we used to be
and it feels like looking at a photograph
of two girls
who had no idea
they were standing
at the edge
of an ending.
And perhaps that is what hurts most.
Not that she left.
Not that we became strangers.
But that there was a last time
for everything.
A last walk.
A last joke.
A last hand kiss.
A last conversation.
A last day
we were us.
And neither of us knew it.
So we left it there.
Unnoticed.
Ordinary.
Buried among a thousand moments.
And now
I spend years
searching for a goodbye
that already happened.
