To the boy who loved me in darkness

The phone call drops again at 11:47 PM, and I'm left holding silence like a secret I was never meant to keep. In the darkness of my room, I remember how you only loved me when the sun couldn't see us, when shadows were as thick as your shame.

You were a boy made of midnight confessions and whispered promises that dissolved with dawn. In the dark, your hands knew my name—traced it across my skin like scripture, like something sacred. But come morning, loving me was inconceivable.

You were always leaving even when you were staying, weren't you? Even with your arms around me, I could feel the distance you carried like a second heartbeat. Your body present but your soul already halfway out the door, calculating escape routes even as you pulled me closer. I learned to love a ghost. The daylight scrambled our frequency. But I savored those stolen moments in parking lots after dark, in empty playgrounds where streetlights couldn't reach, where you'd hold me like I was the only real thing in a world of shadows. Those moments felt more true than anything I'd ever known, even though I was loving someone who was ashamed of loving me.

Now I wrap my arms around myself in the dark, trying to remember the weight of your embrace, the particular way you fit against me like we were two halves of the same broken thing. I hold myself the way you used to hold me—desperate and careful, like something precious and fragile. But there's a feeling I can't replicate, a warmth that only comes from being chosen.

Sometimes I wonder if you think of those midnight hours, if you miss the girl who loved you in secret, who made peace with being your beautiful shame. Or if I've become just another shadow you learned to live without, another secret you buried so deep you convinced yourself it never happened. I was your secret scripture, the prayer you only said in darkness, the love you carried like contraband.

But here in my room, I practice holding myself like you held me. I whisper my own name the way you used to whisper it, try to love myself the way you loved me—desperately, secretly, like something that could disappear if examined too closely.

A bad connection, static—

all that's between us.

I think of you as the horizon.

I think of you.

Love mia.