The Light Feels Dimmer Now

It's a Tuesday evening and the sky is doing that thing where it turns everything amber and I almost texted you about it before I remembered that remembering is all I have tonight. The apartment holds your ghost in the smallest ways—a mug you left behind, the indent on the couch where you always sat. I keep catching myself glancing at the door like you might walk through it with that half-grin I never deserved.

I miss you the way you miss sunlight in winter—not desperately, but with a low ache that settles into your bones and stays. Everything is fine here, and that's almost the hardest part, because fine without you feels like a color with the brightness turned down. If you were here, we'd probably do nothing at all, and that nothing would be everything.