If you never saw me again, it wouldn’t hit like thunder. It would be quiet, a slow unraveling in the spaces we once filled together. The echo of your laugh, the pause before your words, the way you made ordinary moments feel less ordinary — all of it would linger like a shadow in rooms I didn’t know held you. It would be in the half-smiles I catch in mirrors, in the corners of conversations that feel emptier, in the nights when silence suddenly weighs heavier than it ever did before. I would wonder if I ever truly showed you how much you mattered, if I ever said enough, if I ever listened enough. And then the ache would bloom — not sharp, not violent, but a slow, soft unraveling that tugs at memory and longing. Absence has a way of teaching the soul things presence never could: how fleeting is the time we have, how sacred are the glimpses of connection, how tender is the imprint someone leaves on the heart without even trying. If you never saw me again, it would feel like the world forgot a color it once carried, a song it once hummed, a weight that never fully lifts. And yet, in that absence, I would hold you anyway — in gratitude, in sorrow, in the quiet understanding that some connections, once made, don’t fade. They echo. They linger. They stay. Even if you’re gone.