The last time we met

The last time we met

your silence wore my favorite shade of blue.

You smiled the way sunsets do—

beautiful enough to promise tomorrow,

brief enough to belong to yesterday.

I kept setting two cups on lonely evenings,

letting one grow cold beside mine.

I spoke to empty rooms

as though walls could carry your replies

without breaking into echoes.

Every crowded street rehearsed your footsteps.

Every familiar song borrowed your voice.

I mistook every passing face for hope,

and every goodbye for an accident.

People said time would return

what distance had stolen.

So I waited

through seasons that forgot my name,

through nights that never learned to end.

Then one quiet morning,

I found your absence folded inside the mirror.

The hands I had been reaching for

had always been my own.

I wasn't mourning a lover.

I was grieving the version of me

I abandoned while searching for someone else.

Come back when you're ready,

my dear self.