Love in the Bubble: Is There Space For Us?

Have you ever thought the universe folded in on itself just to make room for us?

Have you ever thought forever was something you could cup in your hands — fragile, trembling — and keep?

Because I did. I still do.

We’re lying bare in my bed — the sheets still warm, the air thick with everything we did and didn’t say. 

It isn’t a special night. The alcohol hums through my veins like static, whispering that this must be real, that the universe really did bend its edges to make space for you and me. 

The room is spinning for you — I can see it in your glassy smile — but for me, it’s terribly, tragically still.

I remember us dancing.

Your hand on my waist like it was holding the world steady, and when you kissed me, the music disappeared — the only rhythm left was the firework stutter of my heart, and I thought, this must be it. 

I remember sunlight spilling across the pavement, you across the table, coffee cooling between us as if time had decided to slow just for this.

The way you looked at me — like I had hung the moon and every star, like they were ours alone, like you believed I had done it with my bare hands.

In those moments, I could imagine it. You sitting on my bathroom floor, watching me paint colour onto my cheeks; a bottle of wine sweating on the counter, the two of us losing time, missing a dinner reservation that never really existed. I could imagine us driving nowhere, the windows down, the world blurring into insignificance because we were together.

For once, I could imagine a future.

For once, I believed love might be something meant for me.

I’ve always wondered what love truly is.

Is it letting someone rearrange your bones and calling it devotion?

Is it surrendering so completely you forget where you end and they begin?

I thought I was finally learning the language of it — and yet, somehow, I ruined the one thing I’d been yearning to find.

Now I wake up. I open the window. I make my coffee. I move through the rituals of being alive. But there’s a weight on my chest and I can’t seem to name it.

Or maybe that’s a lie. Maybe I can name it — I’m just too afraid to say it aloud. 

Maybe it’s your ghost pressing down on me, the echo of your laughter in the walls, the shape of your absence beside me in bed.

Maybe it’s guilt. Or longing. Or love that didn’t get the chance to start.

How do I tell you that I miss you so much I’m aching, and that I think you must miss me too sometimes, right?

How do I tell you that I’m still waiting in the space between what was and what could have been?

How do I make you believe that I am honest, that I am full of love, that I have so much to give if only you would let me try again?

Will you let me try again?