Shouldve Never Left

I should have never left this place, Nokkhotro. My love flourishes for you here, and it flourishes precisely because this place refuses to forget what I no longer say out loud. This is the home of my love, my affection, the one room in me that never got redecorated no matter how many years passed through the hallway. I breathe here easy, comfortable, the way one breathes only in the house they grew up in, even after the house has changed hands and the furniture has been sold.

Maybe it's late, and lateness is its own kind of confession. You will never know how much I loved you, love you, and will love you, because knowing was never really the point. You only saw the surface: the words of affirmation, the small expressions of a love that kept insisting on being spoken. You have never seen it in action, what I would not have done for you, the version of it that doesn't announce itself, the version that would have moved mountains quietly and told no one, not even you.

Like before, I will utter this again, because repetition is the only ritual I have left: you do not owe me a single thought, a single liking, a single chitchat, a simple hello or how have I been. Trust me, I am not complaining. I love you still, and I will continue doing so, just the way I did before, the way a lighthouse keeps its light on for ships that stopped passing years ago. I can't help it. I simply won't send you a notification about it anymore. Probably you will never see this, but this place on the internet will always know how much I loved you, long after both of us have stopped checking.

Maybe it's late. I lost a lot of my offerings toward you: some good wordings, some near worship in the name of love, coins thrown into a well that never once echoed back. But I came back home anyway, because that is what you do when a place still knows your name. And I will never leave again, never try to redecorate, never move things here and there, because moving things would mean admitting they were ever meant to change.

I will stay like a dusty old bone, who died a century ago but still guards time in the name of one, Nokkhotro, unmoving, unbothered by the dust that settles on everything that outlives its own usefulness.

I love you. There is no other truth around or beyond this.