The ending is always the same. Sift through a thousand photographs, go through a million memories, and you’ll find yourself alone in every single one. An empty passenger seat, a cold side of the bed, a hand no longer held. This is one night I wish the sun would erase. But the sun never erases does it? It merely illuminates; without the sun there would be no shadows. They take form and linger beyond the sun’s reach, their claws sharpened. I hear their shouts, I hear their murmurs, but it just might be all in my head. It does not matter if they’re real, though, on a whim, they can still spill your blood.

I don’t know what vile sin I have committed to deserve her fury. She liked to play this game where she asks for my opinion. The catch is she will never take it unless it fits squarely within what she already has decided before asking me. Games with her were always rigged. I know now that she never really loved me, but we shared something more intimate than love: an eternal, boundless, melancholy. We ached for something. Her eyes screamed it. The eyes of perpetual sadness.

She makes me question the rules I’ve put in place for years. The morals, the compass, the understanding of relationships I’ve clung to for so long—they all feel flimsy in the face of what I feel for her. I want to throw all of it out of the window just to see her face next to me first thing in the morning. I’ve built walls so high, thinking they’d keep me safe, but she doesn’t climb them. She doesn’t tear them down. She simply stands outside and waits. And somehow, that’s more devastating.

I told myself I’d given up on being a hopeless romantic, on grand gestures, on the impossible ideals of soulmates. But she rewrote that script. She made me believe, for the briefest moment, that maybe I wasn’t foolish to hope for something more. And now, I’m left with the quiet, aching knowledge that the rules of my life—the ones I thought were unshakable—mean nothing without her.

And now, I can’t escape the feeling that I’ll never quite find someone like her again. Not because she’s perfect—she’s clumsy and infuriating and stubborn in ways that drive me mad. But because she makes the world sharper, more vivid. The mediocre becomes beautiful in her presence. The sky bluer, the rats cuter, the air clearer. She makes me feel like I’ve been walking through life with my eyes half-closed, and now I can’t unsee the colors she’s shown me.

She gave me something more dangerous than hope, more wicked than enthusiasm, more insidious than love. She gave me a taste of what could be, and that is a drug with the worst withdrawal. I’ve tried to wean myself off it, but the memory is relentless. It clings to me like the scent of her hair, like the weight of her absence in a room she never even entered.

I miss her both emotionally and physically. The weight of her absence presses against my chest, her memory clawing at the edges of my mind. And yet, I can’t bring myself to regret a single moment. Because for all the pain, she gave me a glimpse of what could be. And even if I never taste it again, I’ll carry that with me. Forever.