She needed space.

I needed her.

And somewhere in between,
          I had to learn
     which mattered more.

So I sat with it.

The silence.

The not knowing.

The endless scroll through messages I didn’t send.

The inexplicably heavy weight of a phone in my palm.

Every hour stretched,
      each one a question
      without an answer.

I could have reached,
  could have asked,
  could have begged

  for a sign.

But instead, I let the waiting do its work.

Let the distance be what it needed to be.

Let the quiet hold its own kind of weight.

Until suddenly,
      there she was.

Not all the way back,
             not yet.

But speaking,
    showing up,
    giving me just enough to know—

    I hadn’t lost her.

And maybe that was the real lesson.

That sometimes,
     the hardest thing to do…

     is nothing at all.