Separate Suns

By Nidhi

In English we say,

I miss you

In poetry we say,

I loved you like the burning sun,

you were the warmth that taught me how to glow,

and how to burn.

We were seventeen and infinite,

two halves of the same secret-

writing miss everything in messages

as if language could hold us together.

Every song I sang for you

was a kind of worship,

every I love you

a dare to the world not to break us.

But growing up means learning

that the same vine can birth blooms 

that no longer touch.

You were busy chasing a future,

I was busy chasing you.

I mistook your distance for forgetting,

your exhaustion for apathy,

and my fear for love.

When you couldn’t give me your time,

I filled the silence with hurt.

I thought anger would keep you close.

I didn’t know love could suffocate.

It wasn’t an explosion,

just a soft undoing,

two people sighing in opposite directions.

Now you have a new orbit,

someone else who shares your sunlight.

You post the same kind of stories

we once made only for each other,

and I flinch at my own pettiness

this quiet envy that still tastes like care.

You told me,

we can ask, but we can’t go back.

And I hated you for saying it gently,

for being kind when I wanted cruelty

something to match my ache.

Five years,

and still, some mornings,

I reach for my phone like it’s time travel.

But even ghosts grow tired of being summoned.

If I could tell you one thing,

it’s that I love you still,

not as wish, not as wound,

but as something that simply exists,

like breath, like gravity.

You could change your voice, your city, your laughter,

and I would still know you

by the light you left behind.

In English we say,

I miss you.

In poetry we say,

you are the ache that made me gentle,

the sun that still rises,

somewhere I can’t see.

By Nidhi