This flame has known your name longer than I have known my own. It was burning in my chest the day I first looked at you and forgot how to breathe normally. And it will burn long after the last star forgets to shine — because loving you was never a choice. It was the only thing my soul already knew.

तेरी आँखों में बसा है मेरा जहाँ,
तू मिले तो लगे मुकम्मल हर कहाँ।
ये दिल तो बस तेरा नाम धड़कता है,
तू ही मेरी रूह, तू ही मेरा इमान।

Some nights, when it's too quiet and the world is asleep, I light a candle and sit with you in my mind. I imagine the warm glow catching in your eyes — the way they crinkle when you're about to smile but haven't yet, that tiny pause before your laughter breaks open and fills every empty corner of me. I imagine your head on my shoulder, your breath warm against my neck, your fingers finding mine under the blanket like they were always meant to be there. And in that imagined silence, I hear you whisper something so soft that only my heart can hear it. I don't need to know the words. The feeling is enough. The feeling is everything.

कभी सोचा न था इश्क़ ऐसा होगा,
कि साँसों में तेरा ही ज़िक्र होगा।
तू दूर भी हो तो भी पास लगे,
हर धड़कन में बस तेरा ही अक्स होगा।

You are not just someone I love. I need you to really hear this. You are the reason I understand what poets were trying to say for centuries. You are the first sip of chai on a freezing morning when my hands can barely hold the cup but somehow everything feels okay. You are the softness of a blanket pulled close at 3 a.m., the silence between two heartbeats when the world pauses and only we are real. You are the way sunlight touches the curtains just before I open my eyes and reach for you — and when I find you there, I think this is why I was born.

I need to confess something. Before you, I didn't know that a person could feel like a place. Like rest. Like the sound of coming home after being lost for years. When I'm with you, every wound I've ever carried stops asking to be healed — it just forgets it existed. Your voice doesn't just speak to me. It lands somewhere so deep that I didn't know I had that kind of space inside. You filled rooms in me I didn't know were empty. You gave me a reason to be gentle with myself, because you held me like I was something worth being gentle with.

And if you ever doubt whether you are loved — look at this flame. It is me, sitting awake at 2 a.m., thinking about the way you tuck your hair behind your ear when you're thinking, the way your voice drops soft when you're tired, the way you look at me sometimes like I'm the only real thing in the room. That look. God, that look. Nobody has ever made me feel as seen as you do. You don't just love me — you found me. In a world of billions, your heart recognized mine. And mine has never stopped saying thank you.

तुम मिलो तो बताऊँ क्या-क्या कहना है,
बस इतना कि तुम्हारे बिना अधूरा रहना नहीं है।
हर जनम में तुम्हें ढूंढेगा ये दिल,
क्योंकि तुमसे ही मेरा हर रिश्ता निभाना है।