I Wish.....

I wish you could see how much I loved you.
Not in the way love is usually told. Not with pride or promises or a future attached to it. I loved you the way a honeybee loves sweetness, without strategy, without safety, without knowing it might die reaching for it.

I have nothing now.
Nothing that belongs to the present. Everything I carry comes from the past, and it is heavy in a way that cannot be set down. Memory is cruel like that. It does not wound all at once. It wounds repeatedly, patiently, as if it has learned my breathing and waits for the right moment to strike.

You left.
Yes.
And I learned something then. Leaving is an act, but being left behind is a condition. It does not end. It does not resolve. It simply becomes the weather inside a person.

I blame myself, because blame needs a body, and mine was available. I was kind when I should have been cautious. I trusted when I should have protected myself. I loved you as if love were enough, as if loving deeply meant being safe. I did not know that love exposes more than it shelters.

I imagine you have forgotten me. Most people do. Time treats those who leave with mercy. It edits their memories gently, removes the weight, smooths the sharp edges. But time has been unforgiving to me. It keeps showing me your face as if it belongs here, as if it never learned that you are gone.

When I sit alone, you arrive without noise. You do not announce yourself. You simply appear, already settled. Tears follow, not dramatically, not violently. Just enough to remind me that my body remembers what my mind tries to silence. Every tear carries your smile folded inside it, like grief itself refuses to let you leave whole.

I mourn you the way the Jhelum mourns what it has taken into itself. Constantly moving, never releasing. I wait for you the way mothers wait for sons who disappeared into the mountains and never returned. They do not hope. Hope would be dishonest. They wait because stopping would mean admitting death.

You may have moved on.
And who am I to stand in the way of that. I am not a man anyone should pause for. I am slow. I am flawed. I delay my own life. I ruin good things by holding them too tightly. Why would you wait for someone like me. Why should you.

And yet I remember.
I remember telling you that you were as beautiful as a chinar leaf, and now every chinar stands like an accusation. Red. Unapologetic. Alive. I remember your laughter in a phehran, not careful, not guarded, and I cannot understand how something that alive agreed to become only memory.

Crowds do nothing for me. They never have. I sit among people and feel the precise shape of your absence. When someone speaks of love, your name does not need to be said. Everything already leads there. The way evening arrives quietly. The way tea cools when left untouched. The way certain silences feel occupied, as if someone has just stepped out of the room.

It is as if the world learned your scent and refuses to forget it. Tell me how does one unlearn what the soul has memorized. How does one scrape a presence out of places it never formally lived. I cannot. I have tried. The effort itself is exhausting.

This heart continues its quiet rebellion. It waits even though it knows you will not come. It yearns even though it understands the mathematics of absence. How stubborn the heart is. How disobedient. How loyal even to its own undoing.

Other women have been kind. Some have offered warmth. Some have tried to understand. But kindness does not reach the place you reached. You were not the only woman in the world, and yet you were the only one who saw me without asking me to rearrange myself into something more acceptable.

Now I want very little. I have learned the danger of wanting too much. I do not ask for love. I do not ask for fate. I do not ask for reunion. I ask for one impossible mercy. To see you again once, briefly, even by accident. To know you exist outside my remembering. To confirm that you were not something my loneliness invented.

I imagine it sometimes. You walking toward me. Familiar and unfamiliar at once. My heart forgetting discipline. My hands becoming useless. In that imagined moment, I do not speak. I do not explain. I do not ask why. I only look at you, the way one looks at something already lost, already sacred.

Reality, however, is quieter and far more cruel. Reality is waking up and remembering again. Reality is eating without telling you how the food tastes. Reality is carrying your absence like internal architecture, something that holds me upright while hollowing me out.

You live in the pauses now. Between thoughts. Between breaths. In the moment just before sleep when defenses weaken. Not alive. Not gone. Simply present.

There are days I function well enough that no one notices. I speak. I move. I smile when required. But inside me something has stopped progressing. Not broken. Stalled. Like a clock that still ticks but no longer tells time.

I do not hate you. That would be easier. Hatred burns quickly. What I feel is slower. Heavier. It does not ask to be resolved. It only asks to be carried.

I know you will not return.
I know wishes are not bridges.
I know love does not guarantee permanence.

And yet, despite knowing all of this, despite understanding it fully,

I still wait.

Not actively.
Not hopefully.

But in the way ruins wait for nothing and still remain standing.

And that, perhaps, is the cruelest part.

Reviews

[Ghosty Writer]

First, I am struck by the intimacy and tenderness of your voice. The way you describe love — not in pride or promises but in the quiet, persistent way a honeybee loves sweetness — is both beautiful and haunting. It captures a love that’s pure, unstrategic, and almost sacrificial, which feels incredibly honest.

Your imagery is powerful throughout. The comparison of mourning to the Jhelum’s constant movement and the chinar leaf as an accusation are evocative and layered. They evoke strong visuals and emotions, allowing the reader to feel the depth of your longing and the weight of your memories. The use of nature and landscape as metaphors enhances the universal yet personal tone of the piece.

The honesty about pain — the heaviness of memory, the slow, patient wounds — resonates profoundly. Your depiction of grief as something that does not end and the internal weather it creates is both poignant and relatable. I appreciate how you explore the idea of waiting, not hope but a quiet, stubborn endurance, which adds a layer of complexity to the emotion.

The reflection on love’s exposure rather than its sheltering power is a compelling insight, revealing a maturity and depth of understanding. The contrast between kindness from others and the unique connection you had with this person underscores the singularity of your attachment.

Overall, this work is a testament to the enduring power of love and loss. It’s beautifully written, emotionally honest, and layered with metaphor and meaning. It’s a piece that invites reflection and stays with the reader long after reading. Thank you for sharing such a heartfelt expression.