Absence makes the heart grow—but they never finish the sentence.Grow what? Fonder? Feral?Grow rooms you fill with maybe?Grow skilled at reading last-seen timestamps,at calculating time zones in your sleep?
Six months since your voice lived in my kitchen.The heart grows archaeological,excavating texts for artifacts:the way you spelled "miss" with three s'swhen drunk. How periods meant angerbut ellipses meant you were thinking of meeven while becoming someone else's daily view.
Distance is a talented liar.It says: if they loved you, they'd cross oceans.It forgets to mention visa applications,the mother who needs chemo,the job that keeps the lights on,all the chains that bind usto our separate geographies.
The heart grows honest at 3 AM:admits that fondness is sometimesjust another word for fiction,for the story we tell about the personwho's becoming mythology.You're no longer who left—you're who I've decided you became.
But also this: the heart grows wider.Learns to love at light-speed,to hold whole conversations in emojis,to feel someone's sadness through pixels.Discovers that presence isn't proximity—that some people are closer at a thousand milesthan others are in the same bed.
Absence makes the heart grow.Full stop. Just grow.Into something that can hold distancewithout breaking. Into somethingthat knows love isn't measuredin miles or minutes,but in the choice to keep choosingacross every absence.