Right across from my prayer

​

Before I knew your name,

I sat in a car

and asked God

to bring someone into my life.

I did not know

that across from where I prayed,

you were already there.

Living your own life.

Carrying your own hurt.

Waiting for something too.

The night we met,

neither of us planned to go.

We both almost stayed home.

We both arrived late.

And somehow,

out of every place

we could have been,

we ended up in the same room

at the same time.

You had been hurt before.

So had I.

You wanted the things

I had quietly wanted too.

Something real.

Something steady.

Someone to grow beside.

Then you told me

I was everything

you had been looking for.

You told me

I made you feel things

no one else had.

And I believed you.

How could I not?

I had prayed

where you lived.

I met you

on a night neither of us

meant to attend.

We carried similar wounds.

We wanted similar futures.

It felt like too much alignment

to call random.

So I called it a sign.

I called it timing.

I called it answered prayer.

I called it the end

of all my waiting.

And maybe that is why

I still hold on.

Because letting go of you

also means letting go

of the meaning

I gave to every coincidence.

It means asking

whether I saw God’s hand

or only my own hope.

Whether the night we met

was fate,

or simply a night

that changed me.

Whether you were meant

to stay,

or only meant

to arrive.

I still do not know.

I only know

that something can feel

like an answer

and still become a question.

Something can feel sacred

and still end.

Someone can tell you

that you are everything

they ever wanted,

and still leave.

And that is the part

I cannot make sense of.

Not that we met.

But that everything

seemed to point toward us,

and somehow

we still became strangers.

Maybe the coincidences

were never a promise.

Maybe they were only proof

that, for one moment,

our lives really did meet.

But some nights,

I still think about that prayer.

I think about you

living right across from it.

And I wonder—

if you were never meant

to remain,

why did finding you

feel so much

like being answered?