I miss you in a way that hurts.

It is not the kind of missing that feels soft and sweet, like a quiet longing that makes my heart warm. No, this is something heavier. Something sharp. Something that keeps me awake at night and follows me through my days like a shadow I can’t outrun.

I miss you in the way that silence fills a room after a loud conversation, in the way the air feels empty when a song suddenly stops playing. I miss you in the spaces where you should be, in the moments you should have been a part of. I miss you when I wake up, reaching for a presence that isn’t there. I miss you when I walk alone, feeling the absence of your hand in mine. I miss you in laughter, in loneliness, in every second that passes without you beside me.

I wonder if you feel it too. If my name ever lingers on your lips when you are about to speak. If you turn your head in a crowded room, thinking, just for a second, that you saw me standing there. If your heart aches the way mine does when the world reminds me of you in the smallest, most unexpected ways.

I hate how love and longing come as a pair. How you can’t have one without the other. Because love is warm, love is safe, love is beautiful—but longing? Longing is cruel. It turns love into something that aches, something that begs, something that makes you feel incomplete. And God, do I feel incomplete without you.

People say distance makes the heart grow fonder, but they don’t talk about how it also makes the heart restless. How it makes nights longer and mornings lonelier. How it turns time into an enemy, stretching the days into something unbearable.

I try to remind myself that love is patient. That this is just another chapter, not the whole story. But patience is hard when your heart is screaming, when your body is craving the simple things—your touch, your voice, your presence beside me. It’s hard to wait when all I want is to close my eyes and wake up in your arms.

I think about the little things. The way your eyes soften when you look at me. The way your voice sounds when you’re half asleep. The way your fingers trace lazy patterns on my skin when we’re close. I hold onto these memories like they are lifelines, like they are all I have left of you. And maybe, for now, they are.

I miss you in a way that makes my chest feel hollow. In a way that makes love feel almost unbearable. I miss you with a kind of desperation that makes time feel like an enemy, and space feel like a punishment. I miss you in a way that words will never be enough to explain.

I miss you in a way that hurts.

With sad eyes and a heavy heart,

Neta.