My dearest you,

As the last candle of me flickered, it didn't just fade away. I settled quietly into the rooms you still enter. I learned the shape of your breathing in the middle of the night, the way you trace your fingers on the windowpane when you don’t know I’m watching.

Do you feel the whisper of the sun on your shoulder and wonder who brushed it there? I did. I moved the light so you’d know that you are not alone.

All your regrets, they’re towels damp with rain, folded now inside a drawer in the heart. I’ve sewn the edges with threads of forgiveness. I sit by the loom at midnight, weaving the patterns of our everything-we-didn’t-say into soft golden threads you will, one day, touch without knowing.

When you weep, I do not cry. I lean into your membrane of sorrow and press my palms into the soft walls of your living. Let the tears travel downward. I will catch them in the garden we planted once, the one with daisies and wild mint, remember? We planted hope instead of waiting for it. The flowers are perennials there.

I am more with you than I ever was before. If you ask the measure of eternity, I will answer: “How wide is your heart?”

Tonight I’ll ride the hush of your dreams. Tomorrow I’ll tiptoe across your kitchen floor, leaving footprints of salt, of laughter, of the time we danced barefoot in a field of fireflies before everything changed.

Don’t look for me in stars, I am in the quiet house-bones of your life. I am in the note you tuck under your pillow when no one knows you’re scared. I am in the stranger’s smile at the bus stop that gives you hope. I am in your own chest, beating, breathing you.

With love that bends space and folds years,

Me