If I Close My Eyes, You’re Gone

The air feels colder tonight, like something is missing. The bed feels emptier without you. I lie here holding the pillow you used to sleep on, my eyes burning as tears fall quietly into the dark. My skin feels cold, the bed creaks with every restless movement. I try to close my eyes, to escape into sleep—but the night drags on, and I’m still awake.

I can’t close them without thinking of you.

Memories of us occupy my mind, looping endlessly. I wonder what I could’ve done, what went wrong, what I could have said to make you stay. There’s a numbing ache in my chest. It creeps slowly, then all at once, hitting me over and over again. You’re really gone, and all I can do now is live inside the memories we left behind.

The silence is unbearable. It reminds me of those songs that hurt a little too much to listen to at night. The kind that say everything you’re too afraid to admit. The kind that echo in the dark, where every lyric feels like it was written just for you. Like loving you never really ended… it just had nowhere left to go.

Maybe in another life, we were still together. Cuddling in bed, feeling each other’s warmth. Maybe in another version of us, nothing fell apart. Maybe there, I said the right things. Maybe there, you stayed.

But in this life, I’m alone.

I stare at the ceiling, and it feels too wide, too quiet. Like the world stretched itself too far the moment you left. I turn to your side of the bed out of habit, expecting something—your voice, your breathing, the comfort of knowing you’re there. But all I’m met with is emptiness.

And it terrifies me.

I’m scared I’ll never sleep again.

Not because I can’t, but because I don’t know how to without you. Sleep used to mean rest, peace, the soft rhythm of your presence beside me. Now it just feels like surrendering to silence, to the memories that get louder the moment I close my eyes.

The way you used to pull me closer. The warmth of your hands. The quiet moments that didn’t need words. They replay like a song I can’t turn off, stuck on repeat, every note aching a little more each time.

Now, even rest feels unfamiliar.

The bed is still the same. The night hasn’t changed. But without you, everything feels wrong. Like a song missing its melody, like a story cut off before it could end.

And I lie here, wide awake, wondering if this is what it means to lose someone—

to keep living in the same world,

but without the part that made it feel like home.