Where Are You?

I woke from a wonderful dream.

You were there.

Not in some dramatic cinematic way. No explosions. No sweeping orchestral music. Just warmth. Your warmth. The kind that settles quietly into a person’s soul until they realize they’ve stopped feeling cold for the first time in years.

And then I woke up.

2:38 in the morning. Silent house. Empty bed. The faint hum of electronics and the occasional whisper of tires somewhere far off in the New Mexico darkness.

I laid there staring at the ceiling for a while, trying to hold onto the dream before reality washed it away.

You were smiling at me in it.

Not politely. Not performatively. Not the smile people give because social convention demands it. No, your smile carried that softness that only exists when someone is genuinely happy to be standing in your presence.

God, I miss that.

Or maybe I miss the possibility of it.

I miss the way your fingers absentmindedly traced slow patterns across my back while we talked about absolutely nothing important. I miss cheek kisses used as punctuation marks in conversation.

I miss feeling wanted.

Not owned. Not controlled. Wanted. There’s a difference.

I do not dream of possession anymore. Life cured me of that fantasy long ago. Love should not require surrendering your autonomy, your identity, your freedom to breathe as an individual soul. I don’t want someone to complete me. I want someone to walk beside me while we both remain fully ourselves.

And I want connection. Deep connection.

The kind where we find excuses to see each other during the week because waiting until the weekend feels unbearable. The kind where we meet in strange little places after work just to feed the thing growing between us. A coffee shop. A park. A roadside diner. The parking lot beside a motorcycle while the sun disappears behind the mountains.

I want your eyes to lock onto mine and scramble every coherent thought in my head.

I want your laughter interrupting mine.

I want your arms wrapped around me while the sun warms your closed eyelids and the cold wind dances through your hair.

I want breakfast dates that somehow last four hours because neither of us can make ourselves leave.

I want your hand sliding across the table to rest against mine while we pretend to continue the conversation even though both of us are drowning in the tension of simply being close, your belly full from breakfast, but your soul still starving for one more hour with me.

One more smile, one more touch, one more lingering glance before we finally force ourselves back into the world.

I want to look across a crowded room and immediately feel calmer because you’re in it.

And maybe that’s what hurts tonight. Not loneliness exactly. Absence.

The absence of tenderness. The absence of touch. The absence of someone whose soul lights up when they see me walking toward them.

I know you exist somewhere. Maybe you’re lonely too. Maybe you’re lying awake at some impossible hour wondering if your person is still out there. Maybe you’ve almost given up. Maybe life bruised you a little too deeply. Maybe you built walls where windows used to be.

I understand. Life has bruised me too.

But despite everything, some stubborn part of me still believes in this. Still believes in warmth. In tenderness. In chemistry. In passion that feels safe instead of consuming. In the quiet intimacy of simply being known.

And so tonight, somewhere between memory and dream, between longing and hope, I find myself asking the darkness a simple question: Where are you?