It is said that absence sharpens love much as wind sharpens a flame, coaxing it either into brilliance or into nothingness. She did not yet know which way the wind would blow for them, but she felt its first stirrings when he told her — quietly, almost apologetically — that he would be away.
It was not forever, nor even for an intolerable length of time. A work assignment, he explained, that would take him to another town several hours away. A matter of weeks, perhaps months, but the certainty of his absence struck her with an unexpected force. She had grown accustomed, in so short a time, to the possibility of encountering him: in a café, at a market, in the little corners of life where their paths seemed to entwine. The thought that he would no longer inhabit the same streets, the same air, unsettled her in a way she could not entirely confess, not even to herself.
When the day came, they met once more in the small café where so much had quietly begun. The rain fell gently against the windows, as though the world itself sought to soften their parting. He spoke lightly, as if determined not to cloak their farewell in sorrow, but she noticed the way his gaze lingered a fraction longer, the way his smile carried a trace of reluctance.
"You will hardly notice I'm gone," he said, though his eyes betrayed him.
"Perhaps," she replied softly, though she knew well she would notice. She would notice in the absence of laughter at unexpected moments, in the missing warmth of his gaze across a crowded room, in the silence where his words had once been.
They parted without drama, no grand declarations or promises carved in stone. Instead, he touched her hand gently, briefly, a gesture so simple yet so filled with tenderness that it imprinted itself upon her skin. And then he was gone, the sound of his departing footsteps echoing in her heart long after the door closed behind him.
In the days that followed, she felt his absence acutely. The streets seemed emptier, the market quieter, the café somehow hollow. Yet amid the quiet ache of missing him, there was also something else — a curious certainty that his absence had revealed. She had thought her feelings no more than a budding fondness, delicate and uncertain, but distance had stripped away pretence. What remained was undeniable: she missed him because she loved him.
They wrote to each other — not constantly, but often enough that the thread between them held fast. His words on paper carried his voice, his humour, the rhythm of his thought. Sometimes he would write of the work that kept him occupied, sometimes of the people he met, and sometimes, more rarely, of how he missed their conversations, their laughter, the ordinary ease of simply being in her company. She treasured these letters, reading them by lamplight, her fingers tracing the loops of his handwriting as though it were a map leading her back to him.
At night, she found herself recalling the smallest of details: the exact shade of his eyes in sunlight, the cadence of his laughter, the way he tilted his head when listening intently. Absence made these memories sharper, as though her mind, fearing their erosion, etched them more deeply into her heart.
And yet, absence did more than create longing; it also wove strength. She discovered within herself a patience she had not known, a capacity to wait without despair, to trust that what had begun between them was not so fragile as to be broken by a span of miles. For though she missed him, she did not doubt him. That was the curious alchemy of love: it turned longing into faith, and silence into promise.
Weeks stretched into months, and though the ache of distance never entirely left her, it softened into something she could carry. She busied herself with daily life, but always, beneath the surface, ran the quiet current of waiting. Waiting, not in desperation, but in hope.
One evening, as the last light faded and she stood by her window looking at the first stars, she realised that distance had given her a gift she had not expected. It had clarified what might otherwise have remained uncertain. Without him near, she saw more clearly what he meant to her. His absence was not a void but a mirror, showing her the depth of her feeling, the truth of her heart.
When at last his return drew near, she did not imagine a dramatic reunion, nor did she script words of confession in her mind. She simply knew that the moment she saw him again, everything she had carried in silence would find its voice — not in grand speeches, but in a smile, a glance, the ordinary gestures that had always been their extraordinary language.
For love, she had learned, does not falter at distance. It measures itself in absence and grows stronger still.
And so, she waited — not with fear, but with a heart quietly certain that what had begun in laughter and serendipity would not end with miles.