“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

—Pablo Neruda

People come and go like the wind,

But what friend, whose lives were connected by the divine –

just…vanish

like dusk slipping quietly

into night.

I shouldn’t be surprised

that this is the price you are willing to pay.

And yet,

after twenty-five years

of deep understanding,

shared prayers,

and soul-spoken dreams—

your silence

feels like a funeral

without a body, not a eulogy.

You left for a girl.

And my God,

I hope she is the one.

Because if not—

who will sit beside your sorrow

when it softens your chest in the quiet hours?

Who will remember the sound of your grief

before it had a name?

Who will whisper prayers for you

when you’ve forgotten how to ask?

You didn’t even give me the chance

to know her.

I would have loved her, too.

in kinship,

because she was loved by you.

Is this what love demands?

That we burn bridges to feel warm?

That the price of being chosen

is forgetting

who knelt beside us

when the world had no altar?

You knew the way my faith folded,

how I bled Neruda from my palms,

believing

that to love

is to live in the ache

of what may never be returned.

And still,

I would have stayed, because that’s what friends do.

Even now—

some quiet part of me

waits