Miss You

In every crisis, I miss you, the way silence grows heavier than pain. I return to that moment, the beginning of covid, when the world stopped, and you met me the last time, a black dupatta with white circles veiling your face, eyes speaking love what words could not.

Since then, each storm recalls you, dengue’s fevered nights, covid’s hollow breath, depression’s endless corridors. Each time, your absence becomes the wound I cannot stitch.

How brief that farewell was, how fleeting the minutes I let slip. If only I had held you longer, carved another memory into time’s stone. If only I could walk backward through the locked gates of yesterday, to stand once more beside you, before the world fractured.

In every crisis, I find you again; not in the present, but in the ache of what could have been.