I Miss You

If I could whisper all my secrets to a faraway land tucked behind my ear that nobody would ever discover, I would say this.

I miss you. Today, I saw a picture of you and realized how far I've gone without thinking of the way your voice calmed all the roaring waves in my chest, or how your hair got my fingertips tingling with the desire to smoothen it down, or how your eyes engulfed mine in a dream full of hellos and no goodbyes, or how your hands sort of looked weird but how I wouldn't have minded entangling them with mine anyway.

I miss you. Breakfasts without wondering how you are became the norm, with me walking into the kitchen with my jungle of hair and sleep-heavy eyes, because I was too busy thinking about how I said good night to someone else eight hours before. But, it was on that cool Saturday morning, when I took an extra step to the refrigerator, when I bent a little too low to get a drink, when I took three seconds longer than usual to look out the window, that I stopped for a moment to ask myself if you were actually living.

I miss you. Do you know the difference between existing and living? You've existed in my head for a long time but it's been a while since you've lived in it. It's been a while since your lungs breathed air under this roof of neurons, since your teeth chattered in the harshness of my thoughts. I haven't nourished your memory in months and I don't think I have the right to do so.

I miss you. When the sun sets, and the cold is my only friend, the rustling of leaves reminds me that I've been living in the present so much that I've left your memory in the background. You were the white noise I loved to listen to in the hollowness of the dark and the brightness of the morning. You were the crashing sounds playing with my senses, and it was...strange, to put the world on pause and pick out an annoying sound we always heard but never really listened to. But then I stopped remembering to pick you out of a hundred other sounds, and then you became just that: white noise.

I miss you. I hope that, after I write this, you go back to your tomb in my mind that I'd dug up just for you. I dug it up long ago and let you lay yourself to rest because I've accepted that our souls have grown too far apart, that coming back would just feel like a puzzle piece which had found itself all the way over the other side of the picture. It would just feel like a dandelion floret that had flown through the wind and travelled a thousand miles only to try to insert itself onto another flower because it thought it'd feel the same.

I miss you. And missing you is different from needing you. So, I'll end this with the hope that "I miss you" will never become "I need you."