Dating apps flickered,
their blue glow dying in the dark
another night, another scroll through ghosts.
I lay there, heart half-buried,
and whispered to the ceiling, to the void:
"I'm ready to love again."
Two days. Maybe three.
Her face bloomed on the screen
like a star the sky had been holding back.
Fuck it, I thought.
What happens, happens.
If she blocks me, she blocks me.
Six days later,
her number in my palm like a live wire
nerves rattling, exhaustion heavy as regret.
Three months blurred by
until the first date arrived,
and the moment she walked in,
something ancient clicked into place.
Different.
The universe had heard me after all.
We were never easy.
Love rarely is.
One year of silence stretched between us
a canyon I learned to walk alone.
I surrendered, palms open to the night:
If it's meant, it will return.
Nothing left to grip but hope
and the old truth I finally understood
If you love them, let them go.
If they return, they were always yours.
If they don't, they never were.
I don't know what tomorrow holds,
only that the stars keep their promises
in their own slow, stubborn time.
She looked at me across the table,
eyes soft with knowing,
and said,
"Look at you
listening to the stars."
And I smiled,
because the universe
had answered in her voice.
