Raindrops on the Windowpane

I wish I could tell you. I had so much to tell you. But I pushed you away with politeness because it hurt so much inside. And I wanted to be alone and cry my eyes out. I always have a million things I wish I could share with you. I wouldn't mind talking to you forvever. I wish I could every day for the rest of our lives, no matter how much we grow older and change. Because our laughter together stays the same.

Raindrops kiss my windowpane,

soft as the hush of a grieving mother,

weeping in my stead—

for even the sky knows what I have lost.

This world, once painted in the colors of your voice,

has dulled to a wasteland of hollow echoes,

a graveyard where I wander barefoot,

tracing your absence like scripture.

I used to wield my sorrow like a blade,

a tempest of rage and restless questions,

but the storm has long since spent itself—

now, only the quiet lingers,

a silence that seeps into my bones like frost.

And beneath it, the truth—

I was the ruin.

I let the only thing I cherished slip through my hands,

the way dusk swallows the last gold of the sun.

And now you are distant,

wrapped in winter,

a phantom in a body I once called home.

Perhaps grief is not a punishment,

but a penance I was always meant to bear.

Why should I taste love,

when I was never worthy of keeping it?

I see myself from a distance,

a hollow-eyed specter wading through regret,

mourning not just you,

but the woman I could have been—

had I held you closer,

had I spoken when words still mattered.

Maybe I was too young and inexperienced,

too entangled in the trivial,

too blind to the quiet ways love asks to be kept.

And yet—

even beneath the armor of your coldness,

I still catch glimpses of something tender,

a ghost of warmth, a buried ember—

the love you refuse to name.

Your words are ice when we speak,

each syllable a blade sharpened by restraint,

yet in the hushed hours of the night,

when you believe I am lost to sleep,

I hear you whisper my name,

like a prayer and my names never tastes better than on your lips.

When you say my name still in the way you do,

It sounds so holy and divine that in some ways

I can feel the love with which you must have seen me.

Morning comes, and the frost returns.

I do not beg you for spring.

I only wish I could sit beside you a little longer,

say nothing, do nothing,

simply exist where you are.

You iterate you don't love me

But when I fall asleep you keep whispering how much you love me

That I would always be yours like you are forever mine.

Is it too wrong to want to hold onto that despite any cost?

I would ask if you still love sunrises,

and search if you still can't restrain your smile over nothing when our eyes meet.

I would tell you of the things that have changed in me—

but I wonder if you already know,

for you were not merely my love,

but my reflection,

the keeper of all the words I left unsaid.

So tell me—

how does one mourn a love that was never just a love?

How does one part ways with a home,

a companion,

a piece of their own soul?

A piece of themself?

I know I deserve this silence.

I should have unraveled my heart properly for you when I had the chance,

instead of now, when it is threadbare and torn.

Yet even in my exile,

I still bathe in the remnants of what we were.

When you tell me you feel nothing,

but whisper the opposite to the dark.

When after my tears, my apologies,

we still find laughter curled between us,

as if, for a moment, the past still exists

and a new future will rise in the horizon,

because despite getting older, we are still Us in each other's proximity.

After so many years when I still find the man I fell in love with in you even now.

You say he's dead but I can still see him coming out sometimes

Hiding behind your cold mask.

But I don't want to snatch your armor and hurt you again,

I would rather kiss the cold you knowing the old you is feeling safe and loved by me.

Perhaps it is selfish to wish for this to never end.

Perhaps I should unchain my heart from your name,

watch you drift into the horizon without reaching for your hand.

But how does one sever themselves from the only soul

who ever truly knew them?

My love was unshaken,

you were the only man who ever lived within my ribs,

as I was the only woman you ever let into your shadowed places.

Yet I was still Delilah with the blade,

as she cut Samson's hair as he slept,

still the storm you never saw coming.

And though I love you with an agony that shatters me,

to you, love will always taste like betrayal—

because you once trusted me with your soul,

and I—

I let it hurt you.

I hurt the one I love again and again until I didn't deserve him anymore

And even that grief is mine to carry

That I failed to protect your heart.

No apology can mend what I have shattered.

Perhaps we will never speak again.

But as long as we do,

I will love you in the only way I can—

by making the days we have left softer,

by asking for nothing,

by giving everything.

Because what we had was not ordinary.

It was the language of twin stars,

the pull of the tides in quiet understanding.

We still finish each other’s sentences.

We still share thoughts before they are spoken.

We still dream the same dreams,

even from opposite ends of the world.

We were sculpted as reflections,

mirrors split from the same glass,

our scars aligned like constellations,

our names rhyming like a prophecy written before we were born.

Without effort, we were yin and yang.

And even when we are nothing,

we still unravel in each other’s eyes.

And I—

I would still be your shoulder,

no matter how many years pass,

no matter how many lifetimes stretch between us.

I once wished we could grow old together,

watch the seasons shift in each other’s arms,

safeguard this impossible, celestial thing we were given,

this love too rare for the mortal world.

But I was the ruin.

And who else is there to blame but me?

Despite my sorrow,

despite the weight of losing you,

I still wish you gentleness, peace.

And though you are far away,

though time is a thief that will try and take even your memory from me,

I will not let it.

I would rather remember you and the grief of losing you

Than the bliss of forgetting our memories.

I am grateful you exist.

And I am grateful I loved you—

even if my tears won't stop calling for you.

Even if everything in me constantly keeps screaming out to you,

you are worth remembering for as long as I live and beyond, for eternity.

I hope I remember you until the end of Time.

© 2025 Inaba Tarek