I have dreamed of you every night that we have been apart… Tossing and turning in a fitful, restless sleep, jolting into tired wakefulness only to relive those unfathomable, treasured eyes looking at me, and beyond me, unsmiling and saying, “It is too late… I was too late.” My angry retort was ready, “It’s better late than never” but the words got lost, entangled in the dawning comprehension, of what you meant, what you had desperately wanted me to understand… And I staggered under the weight of what, I now knew, you had borne alone all along.

I had known of fires, the ominous raging ones of immense heat burning all in its vicinity, in its all-encompassing fatality and power. But I had only heard of the slow-burning flame of heat, and never knew that it could be everlasting, serious, sincere and dangerous. It didn’t burn, or burn out; it lived, it consumed and it left its mark, undeniable, untenable and eternal.

I have thought of you every waking moment of my days, and you flitted in and out of my dreams and sometimes, in recurring nightmares. And every time, I have ached, ached knowing that this was my reality- without you. And I simply wanted to die.