Only Heaven Knows

There are days when her absence feels louder than any sound—
as if every corner of my life still remembers her
even though she’s no longer here.

She slips into my thoughts the moment I wake up,
and she lingers long after I close my eyes at night.
It’s almost funny, in a cruel way,
how someone so far away can still feel closer
than the people right beside me.

I keep telling myself to let go.
That it’s the right thing.
That loving someone sometimes means opening your hands,
even when your heart begs you to hold on.

My friends repeat it like a prayer:
“If it’s meant for you, it will return.”
But they don’t see how my chest tightens
every time I pretend to be strong,
how I smile like nothing’s wrong
while my heart trembles quietly in the background.

Because the truth is simple and painful:
she isn’t here.
Not in my mornings,
not in my dreams,
not in the life I’m living without her.

And yet some part of me—
the stubborn, hopeful, foolish part—
still believes that love has its own strange path,
that maybe out there, something is guiding us
back toward each other.

I don’t know how or when,
and I don’t dare expect anything.
All I can do is whisper my hope into the universe
and wait for whatever answer it sends back.

Maybe she’ll return someday.
Maybe our hearts will find their way.
Maybe love will come full circle,
the way it sometimes does
in miracles and in dreams.

I don’t have the answers.
Only heaven knows.
And until then,
I’ll carry her memory gently—
not as a wound,
but as the soft reminder
that I once loved someone so deeply
that even distance couldn’t erase her.

by Onnaya