Quarter Past 7

They say waiting, longing for the one you love, is a virtue—a testament to true love. Something so glorified, yet no one speaks of how it erodes you, stripping you down, piece by piece, until you are but a wisp of who you once were.

"I have never been held," she whispered. "I have never felt at home in someone's arms". And yet, for reasons beyond reason, she felt like he was the closest thing to heaven she would ever touch!

Every evening, at quarter past seven, she waited. For a glance, a fleeting smile, a moment in his eyes that made her world still. In a room full of people, her gaze sought him, always. And when their eyes met, it was no longer gravity that anchored her, but his gaze.

And oh boy! How she found her solace in him. The way he spoke her name, the timbre of his voice-she would have surrendered forever just to hear him once again.

Call it insanity, call it obsession, call it whatever you must. But no one speaks of the quiet ache of yearning, the slow erosion of a heart that may never return that longing. It is the cruelest kind of suffering, the slowest kind of undoing-not a sharp, sudden pain, but a lingering ache that gnaws at the soul, hope after hope.

Yet, she thought that this time it would be different. That love, when it finally found her, would come with arms that knew how to stay-for she had always been a keeper of hearts, but never one who knew how to say goodbye. But love did not find her. Only hope did. He was right there— close enough to set her world alight, yet always just beyond her grasp, like a fleeting dream that was never meant to be held.

And so, she waited-each fleeting dusk, each breathless hush-every evening, quarter past seven. But he never came. And on the rare evenings that he did, he was like a fleeting tide-arriving only for a moment, speaking in borrowed seconds, never enough to be called home, never enough to truly measure the eternity that she had spent waiting.

And in that silence, she finally understood his presence was a flickering star she could never hold, a rhythm too erratic and unpredictable to follow. No matter how deeply she felt, his heart would never echo hers.

It was admiration. It was longing. It was a story that never found its first page. And so, she etched him into words, wove his essence into verses, let ink cradle what her arms never could. For if he could not stay, if his heart would never beat in time with hers, then at least, within the quiet eternity of this poetry, he would be hers forever-bound not by love, but by the art that refused to forget him!