The rift opened not in the sky, but in her eyes. A hairline crack, invisible to everyone else, but I saw it. The moment it split, every unsaid word I had swallowed, shuddered.

I fell, not into darkness, but into the weight of silence we’d been building together. All the times I said “it’s fine,” all the nods instead of questions, all the goodbyes spoken without looking back; they crowded me now, sharp and echoing.

Inside the rift, time didn’t pass. It replayed. Infinite loops of almosts and nearlys, fragments of conversations that had ended too soon. The silence here wasn’t empty. It was heavy, filled with everything we’d chosen not to say.

I reached out, but she wasn’t there, only the imprint of her voice on the air, fractured, unfinished.

Though years had passes and these lingering thoughts still plagued my mind. I sat in a library with a cold cup of tea. Swirling into it’s own abyss at the bottom of this porcelain mug.

A new set of eyes, a blue swirl or slow moving water dragged my stone grey pebbles into their shores.

What a journey.

I feel like I had been around the world and back, swaying in the harmony of her luscious golden locks that pulled me under. Made me weak.

She sat opposite me and smiled quickly before looking down at her book. I couldn't stop staring and that only made her look back up towards me. Through me. I thought back to the rift in those eyes all those years ago. I saw another one in hers. Though all I wanted to do was dive into it.

And as she smiled again, the rift opened, dragging me with it.