Love, loss and the language of longing

They come quietly.

Like a confession cloaked in silence. Like rain remembered on the roof of a memory. Like footsteps in a forgotten forest, finding us where we thought no path could. We don’t expect them. We don’t summon them. But they show up—unshaken, unannounced—like a shadow stitched into our spine. You may be trudging through the withering weight of a Wednesday when someone, somehow, steals your sorrow with a single smile. And everything shifts. The light. The language of the air. Even your loneliness becomes lyrical.

And yet—there are those who arrive agitated, absent, aloof. Upset for no reason, or reasons wrapped in riddles. Perhaps it isn’t us. Perhaps it’s their own echo they’re arguing with, their own aching absence projected on our presence. We are merely mirrors, reflecting back their fractured selves. And what do you do when the one you love—livid and lost—turns away not with thunder, but with thunderous silence? No explanation. No accusation. Just a wound without warning. Just distance, deliberate and devastating. Just the sense that love arrived too soon, or too late, or in the wrong lifetime entirely. And yet—you remember them. Every star-stung, sorrow-soaked night, where the wind speaks in syllables only your soul understands.

There is something sacred about the first meeting. The spark before speech. The hush before history. The first time your eyes collide, not in confusion, but in quiet confirmation. The first time your silence syncs. The first time laughter leaps between strangers who suddenly sense they’ve shared stories in other lives. That meeting becomes a monument. A temple you return to, even if only in thought.

Your mind becomes a maker of myths, weaving memories from mere minutes. You recall what they wore. How their hand held a glass like it was a secret. How their voice cracked slightly on a syllable that said more than words ever could. The way they looked out the window, hiding a hurricane in their heart. And you? You fell. Fast. Fiercely. Foolishly. Like a leaf that knew the fall was fatal but fluttered anyway.

There was no reason. Just recognition.

You knew them before names. Before gestures. Before gravity. Before you danced through the logic of liking someone, you leapt into loving them. It felt like fate—a flame flickering in the fog. It was spring in your chest. Your ribs became reeds. And at last, the wind knew how to play you.

But love—ah, love—is never only spring.

It carries storms in its seams. There is a monsoon to it. A magnificent, maddening monsoon. A drenching, drowning desire. A delicious devastation that washes the world in longing. Days when you desire them more than daylight. When your soul is soaked in the sound of their absence. When every raindrop recalls their name. Longing is the lightning—the brilliant, brutal flash that splits your composure.

It is thirst without water. Hunger without hope. A wound without war. You weep—not just from your eyes, but from your spine, from the shadowed spaces behind your sternum. You don’t just want them. You want to be wanted by them—with the same wild, wordless want that wakes the wolves. And that want wears you. Wrings you out. Leaves you limp.

Then comes winter—the frostbitten finale. The chilling choice to let go. Or worse—the slow, sinister freeze of fading love. They don’t leave with a slam, but with a shrug. They melt. They vanish like vapour. And you are left with stillness, silence, snow settling on everything you once called sacred.

And it is here, in the cold crucible, that the true test begins. Were they only a season—or a soul-song that plays even when the record’s cracked? Some people are pages. Others, chapters. But the rarest—the rarest are the books. Those who become part of your spine. Those who don’t just enter a scene, but rewrite your structure. They are not always there. But they are always there—in your sentences, in your subtext, in the syntax of your sorrow.

There’s a particular kind of pain in loving someone who cannot love you back the same way. It is the ache of almost. The bruise of could-have-been. And yet—you do not regret. You cannot. Because to have loved deeply is to have lived divinely. To have touched truth, even briefly, is better than living blind.

Let them be livid. Let them be lost. Let them leave. But you? You remain loyal—to the moment. To the magic. To that meeting in the orchard of ache, where everything bloomed and broke at once. Because that was real. Even if it didn’t last, it was true. As true as thunder. As true as tide.

And what of fulfilment? What of those rare reunions where love does not leave, where lips linger, where hands hold not out of habit, but out of homecoming? That is the miracle. That is the myth made flesh. The proof that poetry can kiss you back.

To meet someone who sees your scars and still sings your name softly—that is resurrection. That is rain in the desert. They become not just a person, but a place. Not just a lover, but a lighthouse. Not just a name, but a north star. Someone you come home to, even far from home. Someone who doesn’t complete you—but composes you. Who conducts your chaos into something symphonic.

But even love’s light casts shadows. Even fulfilment holds loss. Every love is a leap. Every connection, a contract with chaos. To love is to hand someone the hammer and trust they won’t shatter you. And sometimes they do. Not out of cruelty, but confusion. Not malice, but movement. And so you part—not with poison, but with poetry.

You are left with memory as your only map. But what a map it is—each kiss a country, each laugh a landmark, each silence a sea. You carry them—always—in the library of your longing. In laughter. In lullabies. In late-night lamplight. In songs that sting. They never leave. They just become part of your weather.

So what do we do with all this ache, this ardour, this art? We live. We write. We wait. We whisper their names at dusk and wonder if somewhere they’re whispering ours too. We hold on—not to the person, but to the presence they brought out in us. To the version of ourselves we became with them—unguarded, undivided, undone.

We were alive then. And maybe—that’s the point. Not to possess. But to feel. To let someone bloom in us like a bruise we’re proud of. To become better for having been broken open.

So here’s to the meetings that moved us. To the eyes that entered before the bodies did. To the hands that held hurt like it was holy. To the seasons that sang and the ones that shattered. To the love that lasted, and the longing that lingered. To the reward of recognition. The thirst of togetherness. The wonder of wordless worship.

And yes—to the winter of waiting too.

Because even the cold is a kind of connection. Even the absence is an ache shaped by love. Even the silence is an echo of something sacred.

Let no one tell you otherwise. Every meeting matters. Every connection carves.

Some just come to remind us: we are not alone in our longing. We are mirrors. We are memories. We are monsoons. And always—always—we are magic waiting to be met.