never really here

“i opened your snap like i do when the silence gets too loud— a saved moment, just pixels, but god, it felt like breath. you smiled, and i smiled back like a fool. like someone still waiting at a closed door, hoping it was all just a long pause. i know you were never really here, not in the ways i needed— not in skin, or presence, or arms that stayed when the world turned cruel. but in my head, you lived. you laughed at my dumb jokes. you sent voice notes in the rain. you were the person i imagined walking home with in every quiet i filled with your name maybe i made you softer in my mind than you ever were. maybe the version of you i miss was more me than you. but even now, even when i know the truth— that you were a shadow passing through my light— i still look at you like you’re here. like you’re about to reply. like maybe this time, you’ll say "i missed you too." funny how the heart doesn’t need permission to believe in ghosts. or how a snap from three months ago can still feel warmer than the people i see every day. i don’t know what hurts more— the fact that you’re not here, or the fact that you never were. and yet… here i am, grinning at a screen, like it’s a mirror of what we never had.”