Where Are You, My Love

I have dreamt of you a thousand times,

And I’ve yet to meet you once.

I’ve searched for you in a thousand lifetimes,

Yet you evade me in this one.

Where are you, my love?

Do you remember

When we danced in the night

With nothing but lanterns

And bedsheets to catch our shadows?

Our daughters laughed until they spilled joy across the grass,

Their father, who was art itself—

Twisting stories into shapes with his hands,

As if the air obeyed his wonder.

The way the light caught the crinkle at the corner of your eyes.

The way you made magic from dust and string,

The way my breath caught

Watching you just be—

Effortless. Infinite. Home.

Do you remember when it was just us,

And we spoke in the language of fireflies?

We told tales from dusk until the stars bloomed,

Their silver listening close.

I still climb rooftops

To catch your face in their light.

They whisper secrets about you

And I stay until they disappear.

Where are you, my love?

Lately,

I am angry.

I rage at the silence between us—

At your absence that grows louder by the day.

In other lives,

You would’ve run to soothe the fire in my chest,

Kissed the thunder from my brow.

Now you do not flinch.

Does my anger no longer move you?

Does my sadness not reach wherever you are?

Have you grown deaf to the sound of me breaking?

Fine!

I will hide from the sun that reminds me of your touch.

I will turn my face from the wind that carries your laugh.

I will play the music too loud—

Drown out your silence with something that doesn’t sound like goodbye.

I’ll rewrite the stars if I have to.

Forget the shape of your shadow.

Unlearn the language we once whispered in dreams.

Is that what it takes?

You always did come when I burned.

So here I am—

Smoke in my lungs,

Your name on my tongue,

Calling you the only way I know how

I’ve searched for you in the scent of old books,

In crowds where someone turns just a beat too late,

In paintings that feel like déjà vu.

I’ve asked the moon to send you back,

But she just smiles,

As if she knows something I don’t...

Maybe this is the lifetime

Where we miss each other by inches.

Where I keep the rhythm

And you hold the melody—

But the song never quite finds its voice.

Maybe this time,

I must carry the whole canvas.

Be the art we once created.

Hold the brush steady

When my hands long for yours.

But I am trying.

To burn like the lantern we once danced beneath.

To become the shadow, the story, the song.

And if you never come—

Still, to live as if you did.