There was an uneasy calmness around that night. He saw the trees as they stopped moving and stood still, as if paying complete respect to the beating of his heart. The dust from the street settled down at his feet without making any noise whatsoever, as he finished reading the last message he had sent her and the light from his phone faded away slowly, leaving only starlight around him. He looked up at the stars, as if trying to find a familiar face in them, that simply didn’t reside there anymore. He’d once told her that he didn’t just love her, she was the very source of light that lit up his world. That the day she’d leave, he’d truly, in every sense of the word, be blind. Today, as he looked up at the stars, he knew the meaning of blindness. There wasn’t a moon in the sky because it was stolen from him and now belonged to someone else, somewhere else. The stars didn’t twinkle for him because the sparkle in them was taken away from him and given to someone else, somewhere else. The air he was breathing wasn’t enough to calm his roaring heart down because it belonged to someone else, somewhere else. She had left.

Love for him wasn’t something that was sold in the shape of hearts in gift shops, it wasn’t something that could be said by one person and heard and repeated by the other, it wasn’t even the touch of a person’s skin upon his own. Love for him started from the heart and spilled out of the mouth like a nectar, that would pull his beloved to it in such a way that she wouldn’t be able to resist taking a bite of it through his words. The words that hit the eardrums of his beloved in such a way, that whatever he said turned into music, with him conducting the most beautiful orchestra she would ever hear. Such beauty that all the love in her soul would begin to flow down her eyes like a waterfall, and make him realize what she could never profoundly put into words. She did really love him, with all her heart and soul, she loved him in every form of the word love.

He remembered the last time he saw her. It was a beautiful day. The winds were blowing calmly, as if trying not to take her scent away from him. The sun that had begun setting in the sky, held on as long as it could, so that he could get one last look at her face and take it all in memory. A memory that would last a lifetime was being made in those fleeting minutes. Their eyes, that had been a reflection of each other’s soul for all these years, were wet with tears of an unequivocal pain. Two souls that had been tied together with love, were being ripped apart by this cruel world and the bodies could no longer hold on. As she started taking her final steps away from him, he heard every single one of them, as loud and clear as thunder falling to the ground, and when she finally went out of view, he saw it all end. The air that he’d been breathing was no longer there. The light that had made the world visible was lost. The place, that was filled with people just a moment ago, was now as empty as his broken heart. He’d finally realized what real pain felt like, and it was beautifully fatal.

Now as he looked up to the skies, he saw all the years pass him by. The places were the same, the people were the same, but the face he was looking for was no longer there. It was all slipping out of his hands. He thought it was like sand, the tighter he held on, the more it slipped out. What he didn’t realise was what he was trying to hold on to was water, and there was no point in holding on. You can’t hold on to water. The nature of water is to flow, and it will flow, in one way or another. The best you can do is allow it to clean your path in its flow, as it makes its journey to its destination. So, he sent his love to the skies one more time, wishing that she finds it and keeps it in her book like she had always done, and walked back home.