It's getting harder to breathe.
Graduation is close enough to touch now. The calendar screams it at me every morning. Teachers are packing up their desks. Yearbooks are passed around like time bombs, signatures scribbled with fake nostalgia.
And she's still here—calm, smiling, like none of this is about to end.
I wish I could pause the days. Freeze them in place. Just long enough to memorize the way her voice sounds when she says good morning, or the shape her mouth makes when she's thinking.
But the world doesn't wait for heartbreak to catch up.
She wore her hair differently today.
It shouldn't matter. It's such a small thing. But it does. It kills me.
Because I realized there will come a day I won't remember what she looked like when she turned to write on the board. Or how she always tapped her pen against the desk when she was thinking. Or the way she never said my name like I was just another student.
Time is cruel like that.
It lets you fall in love slowly, softly.
Then it takes everything away in an instant.
I passed her in the hallway. It was just the two of us. Her hand brushed my shoulder.
"Almost there," she said, with a warm smile.
I wanted to say, "Almost gone."
I didn't. Of course I didn't.
I keep waiting for something big to happen. A sign. A moment. Anything that tells me this meant something more than just a teenage ache.
But it's all quiet. The goodbye is creeping in like a shadow—soft, unannounced, unavoidable.
That night, I stood in front of the mirror and tried to picture a life without her.
I couldn't.
I wrote another letter. Not in the notebook this time. This one was different.
"I don't know if I'll ever be able to forget you."
"Not because you were kind, or beautiful, or the reason I woke up with purpose."
"But because you taught me what it feels like to love in silence."
"You taught me that some people are meant to change you without ever touching you."
"You'll never read this. But if you did, I think you'd know it was from me."
"And I think that would be enough."
I folded it carefully. Taped it shut. Wrote nothing on the outside.
Then I placed it in my drawer.
Maybe I'll give it to her.
Maybe I won't.
We have one week left.
Seven days.
I'm not ready.
I'll never be ready.
But I think I've finally accepted something.
This was never meant to be a love story with a beginning or an end. It was meant to live in the space between—where feelings are real, but never spoken. Where hearts beat, but never align.
I loved her.
And that will have to be enough.