In your Heart and in Mine

You came into my life like a whisper during a storm.
Soft. Unexpected.
I didn’t even hear you at first — because everything inside me was too loud. 

The grief. The loneliness. The tiredness of pretending I was okay.
You didn’t know it then, but the day I met you, I was hanging by threads so thin, they could’ve snapped with a sigh.

And you...
You didn’t fix me.
You didn’t even try.
You just stood there — quietly, unknowingly, giving me something to hold on to without even touching me.

I was a house burned down to ash, and you walked in like sunlight through shattered windows.
Not to rebuild me — but to sit with me in the ruins.

There were people before you. People who made noise.
People who filled silences with empty words.
But never once did I want to walk through a crowd just to end up beside them.
Never once did I crave their presence when the ocean called me to cry in its arms.

But with you...
I told you things I hadn’t even admitted to myself.
With you, silence wasn’t heavy. It was home.
You became my favorite accident.

Everywhere I went, I carried pieces of you —
your laugh in my pocket,
your warmth in the sleeves of my sweaters,
your words replaying in my head like my favorite sad song.

You loved me without conditions.
Without rules. Without expiration dates.
You loved me like I was a sunrise — flawed, late, sometimes hidden — but still worth waiting for.
And I?
I loved you with every scar I had left. Every broken part. Every ounce of the version of me that still believed love could save.

And it did.
You did.
You saved me from myself.
With you, my panic attacks took a vacation.
With you, the darkness asked for permission before creeping in.

You made life taste like something I wanted to keep swallowing.
And I’ll never stop being grateful for that.

But then, life — the cruelest of authors — rewrote our story.

Not with betrayal.
Not with blame.
But with silence. With distance. With time pulling at the threads we had stitched with trembling hands.

We didn’t fall apart.
We were just slowly unstitched.

And now I sit here — trying to write an ending that doesn’t feel like dying.
Trying to say goodbye when every part of me still whispers your name in the quiet.
My heart still keeps a toothbrush for you.
My soul still has a drawer labeled yours.

And yet, we part.

You — with your soft smile and loud heart.
Me — with the memory of what it felt like to be truly seen.

I hope happiness stumbles into you the way you stumbled into me — unexpectedly, gently, completely.
I hope the darkness forgets your address.
I hope every morning is kind to your heart.

But most of all...
I hope you know that what we had wasn’t wasted.
It was everything.

Love didn’t fail us.
Time just ran out of pages.

So this isn’t goodbye.
This is me leaving a candle burning in the window — just in case.
Because I will always love you in the spaces between my ribs,
in the songs I can’t skip,
in the prayers I whisper when no one’s listening.

Forever your soft place to land,
Shallu Jaglan