Us

To the one I may never meet,

I find myself writing to you in the dark, as though the act of placing these words into the air might summon you. I imagine you sitting beside me in some far-off future, the kind of companion who does not need constant conversation, who understands the beauty of silence shared between two souls.

I picture us growing old together—wrinkles etched not only by time but by laughter and endurance. I see us sitting at the end of long days, not needing to speak, because the simple knowledge of “us” is enough. And yet, as I write this, I feel the cruel possibility that such a future may never come.

Maybe I am not destined for love in that way. Maybe my role in this world is to be the one who stands on the edges—kind, approachable, good for conversation, but forever the solitary figure. The family member who is remembered fondly but never truly known, the one who gives warmth to others while quietly carrying the cold within.

Still, I dream of you. I dream of the softness of your hand in mine, of sitting in the hush of twilight with only the sound of our breathing, of knowing I will not leave this life having been unseen. I imagine the way your eyes might look at me, not with pity, but with recognition. And even if you are only a ghost I invent in my loneliness, there is a romance in that imagining—a poetry in yearning for a love I may never find.

So I write this letter into the void, not expecting an answer. Because even if you never exist, the hope of you is enough to keep me alive a little longer.

Forever waiting,
—A nobody dreaming of “us.”