Under a Shared Sky

Tonight, I looked up.

The stars didn’t shine like they usually do. They glowed quietly. Like they were whispering instead of singing. Like they missed someone, too. The kind of sky that doesn’t demand awe, just attention. The kind of sky we used to sit under on the school terrace, shoulder to shoulder, not saying much, because the silence between us never needed to be filled.

I remember one evening like that in particular. You had brought a pack of chocolate, and we passed it back and forth while the sun melted into the buildings. You told me I was your Pole star. It meant the world to me. And I didn’t say it then, but I thought I’d orbit you, if I had the choice. We both laughed and looked away. Neither of us meant to fall in love, but we did; in pauses like that, in ordinary golden hours.

Right now, I’m sitting on my balcony with a cup of cold tea beside me. There’s a thin blanket wrapped around my shoulders and a soft ache behind my eyes that only comes when the sky feels a little too big. The kind of ache that comes from remembering.

Somewhere far away, you’re seeing the same moon. Maybe from your window, propped up on your elbow, sleep still in your eyes. Maybe while walking home from the lab, distracted, phone half-dead in your pocket.

I wonder if you looked up tonight. If your breath caught the way mine did. If your first thought was me. If your throat ached the way mine does when I see the sky and remember every version of you beneath it. If you traced patterns across the stars and pretend you’re pointing them out to me.

The sky has always made me feel grounded. It reminds me that nothing is too far apart if we could all share the same ceiling. That love doesn’t depend on inches or hours, but on the decision to stay, every single day. And the stars are reminders; not of how far we are, but of how much light can still reach across distance. That no matter how far the sun wandered, it still kissed the earth each morning. I’ve held on to it as if it was a promise. And maybe it was.

So I speak to the sky now. Just in case the wind still crosses your dorm tonight. Just in case my words find a home in the same clouds that pass over your city before they pass over mine.

“Did you sleep last night?” “Did your session go well?” “Did you smile today without knowing why?” “Did you miss me, even a little, even in between your coffees and chaos?”

Sometimes, I think you hear me.

Sometimes, it’s in the way my phone buzzes just as I think of you. Or in that one song that plays when I walk past the café in my society, and I imagine us, sitting on the ledge, legs swinging, your thumb tracing tiny circles on the back of my hand. Or the stranger who casually said your name and didn’t even know what it meant to me. Or when I read something beautiful and instinctively reach for my phone to send it to you, even though I know I can’t.

I still remember the way you looked at me when I almost failed that math test. You didn’t say anything. You just put your hand on mine and gave me a little note. It said,“You’re allowed to feel like this. But don’t give up. I love you.”You sat with me until I could breathe again. You never once tried to fix me. Just held space beside the broken. And that was enough. More than enough.

You didn’t need big speeches. You were always a poet disguised as a realist. Always saying the right thing, even when you didn’t know it. Even when you thought you were fumbling, you were holding me up. You had this way of making the mundane feel miraculous. Like remembering how I took my tea, how I preferred my pens uncapped while writing, how I always forgot to eat my lunch and pretended I didn’t care.

I never forgot those messages you sent at 1:17 a.m. The ones where you told me the sky outside your room window looked like spilled ink. The ones where you said you missed me like a skipped heartbeat. The ones where you said you were scared; of growing up, and of growing apart, but you were still holding on.

You always held on.

We built our love like scaffolding; quiet, sturdy, unseen by most. In half-finished notes, in inside jokes that no longer needed words, in the comfort of knowing I didn’t have to explain anything to you twice. In the way you instinctively knew when I needed space, and when I needed you closer. In the way you left the light on for me, figuratively and literally. Even in silence, we were never distant.

We never needed a stage. We never needed witnesses. You once told me you loved me in a crowd by brushing my pinky with yours. And that was louder than anything else ever could be.

You called me “cutie patootie” when I was sick and cranky. I called you “bunny” when you forgot how much you meant to me. It was ridiculous and perfect. You blushed every time. I fell a little more in love every time. I think it was in those ridiculous nicknames, in those quiet, repetitive comforts, that I found something sacred. Something that stayed.

We have never watched the sunset together. But I imagine us doing so, sitting on opposite ends of the bench, feet tucked up, knees barely brushing. I would look at the horizon and say,“Do you think the sun knows how lucky it is to get to rise for the same person every day?”You’d laugh and shake your head at my stupid lines, and I’d get caught up in that beautiful voice, heart thudding so loud it drowned the birds.

There was the day of the competition; easily one of the best days of my life. I remember sitting next to you on the bus, and leaning my head on your shoulder, thinking I didn’t need forever; I just needed more moments like that.

And I remember how we didn’t speak for a while after that. Not because something was wrong, but because something was so heartbreakingly right. That kind of peace doesn’t need a soundtrack. That kind of peace lingers, even now.

Tonight, I missed you. Like a slow, familiar ache. Like a story I already know the ending to, but keep rereading anyway. I whispered your name into my pillow. I imagined your voice saying it back. I almost believed it.

And I couldn’t help but smile.

Because I remembered us; fingers almost touching, and breath shared in the spaces where words used to be. I remembered every fight we got through, every note passed across textbooks, every time you wiped my fingers clean of chocolate without saying a word. I remembered the poems we wrote that we never showed anyone, and the dreams we didn’t dare say aloud, except to each other. I remembered how your presence always felt like coming home.

And in that memory, you are still looking up.

And so am I.

And maybe, as long as the moon keeps rising for both of us, as long as we both keep whispering into the same night, as long as the stars still carry our promises quietly in their light, we’re not really apart.

We’re just loving, patiently, hopelessly, wholly; under a shared sky.