Tonight the sky is dark,
almost empty,
except for a half-moon hanging above the water
like a quiet wound of light.
It looked incomplete —
not broken,
just unfinished.
And somehow,
without meaning to,
it reminded me of us.

I stood there staring at that small curve of gold
and I wondered if you were awake,
if the night in your world felt heavy too,
if anything inside you still stirred
when my name crossed your mind
for a moment too long.

I know you said your answer was “no.”
I know the words were final,
wrapped in truth
and shaped by years of pain
I never knew how to soothe.
But if the moon is allowed
to show only half its face
and still be called beautiful,
maybe I am allowed
to speak only half my heart tonight
and still mean everything.

When you wrote to me,
your words carried the weight of battles
I will never truly understand.
You spoke like a woman who has survived
too many disappointments,
too many unspoken betrayals,
too many years of giving
without being held in return.

And in your message,
I heard the truth behind the truth:
You were not rejecting me—
you were protecting yourself
from another piece of life
that might break you.

I felt your exhaustion
between the lines,
the way a person feels the cold
through the cracks of a window.
You didn’t tell me you were tired.
You didn’t have to.

You said you were at your most available
back then.
You said that window has closed,
that your moments of fertility
have slipped away,
that no man should look at you now
as if love belongs only to those untouched
by time or sorrow.

But if you could see yourself
through my eyes
for even one heartbeat,
you would know
that nothing about you
has ever been diminished
by the years you survived.

I don’t love you because of timing.
I don’t love you because of possibility.
I don’t love you because of the future
or the past
or anything that can be argued away
with logic or fear.

I love you because somewhere,
in the quiet space between your voice
and your thoughts,
I saw a soul that felt like home.
You were the first stranger
I ever felt less alone with.
The first conversation that didn’t feel like noise.
The first woman whose honesty
cut through me deeper
than her beauty ever could.

And maybe that is my tragedy.
Maybe I met you
at the wrong chapter of my life,
when everything around me
was breaking,
shifting,
falling apart.
Maybe I was not the man
you needed me to be
when your heart was still open
and time was still kind.

But tonight, under this half-moon,
I am speaking to you as I am—
not perfect,
not deserving,
just real.

And the real truth is this:

If your heart still hurts,
then something in you still feels.
And if something in you still feels,
then something in you once cared.

You don’t have to remember me.
You don’t have to return.
You don’t have to open a door
you worked so hard to close.

But just know this:

If you ever doubt
that you were cherished,
if you ever question your worth
in a world that has taken so much from you—
remember that somewhere
beneath this incomplete moon,
there is a man who still whispers your name
into the kind of darkness
that doesn’t judge or question,
only listens.

There is a man who carries
your sentences in his chest
like scripture,
who replays your laughter
like a melody he is afraid to forget,
who looks for you in crowds
even when he knows
you’re nowhere near him.

There is a man
who felt your refusal
not as a wound,
but as a truth spoken
by someone he respects
too deeply to argue with.

And even now,
when silence stretches between us
like the distance between stars,
I speak to you in my thoughts
as if you could hear me
in the spaces where night softens
and longing breathes.

So tonight,
I send you this half-moon,
this unfinished light,
this quiet ache in the sky—
because even incomplete,
it glows.
Just like the part of you
that refuses to be extinguished
no matter how much life
has tried to dim it.

And if one day
you ever look at the moon
and feel the faint pull
of something you once knew—
just know
that somewhere,
the other half of that moon
lives in my chest,
still waiting,
still glowing,
still remembering you
in a way
I will never unlearn.