Still, I Burn

How can I miss what I can’t have?

How can my heart ache for something that was never truly mine to keep?

This paradox feels selfish— to long for you, to miss you, to quietly wish reality were different, even when I know I have no right to ask it of you.

Maybe that is the cruelty of longing:

the heart does not always care what is possible. It simply remembers what it wants.

So I stand at the edge of a sea I was never meant to cross, watching you become a light far beyond my reach.

And still, I keep the lighthouse burning—

not because I believe you will return, but because some loves are too beautiful to bury and too impossible to follow.

So I let the flame consume what is left of me, lighting a path for a ship that was never coming home.