She is gone, and now everything feels strangely hollow. It’s ridiculous, maybe how someone you’ve known for such a short time can leave behind a silence this loud. We were only friends, nothing more, nothing defined, nothing promised. But tell that to the part of me that cracked open the moment she stepped into that cab. I stood there, pretending to be okay, pretending this was normal, pretending I wasn’t memorizing the curve of her smile for the last time. I knew I shouldn’t want more. I knew it was impossible, the kind of wish that dies before it even forms. But knowing something and feeling it are two different wars. And now she’s gone. Just like that. No dramatic goodbye, no confession, no moment that could have changed anything. Just a quiet departure, the kind that slips into memory before you even realize it’s happening. It breaks me in ways I can’t explain, not because we were something, but because we weren’t. Because I’ll never know what could have been. Because I will never see her look at me again in that small, unthinking way that made my day feel less heavy. We were nothing more than friends, and somehow that makes the loss hurt even more. It was all so simple. So innocent. And maybe that’s why it feels like the deepest loss, because it was the one thing I never allowed myself to hope for, and still somehow managed to lose.