The art of Missing You.

We say “I miss you.”

Three words. Eight letters. Polite. Economical. Emotionally beige.

But missing someone is rarely that simple. It’s not tidy. It’s not well-behaved. It doesn’t sit quietly in the corner and wait its turn. Missing someone is a full-body haunting. It’s emotional graffiti on your calendar. It’s a craving with no cure, a song stuck in your bloodstream, the phantom weight of a hand you haven’t held in a while but still feel in your sleep.

Sometimes it’s walking into a room and forgetting why you’re there because a memory just ambushed you. Sometimes it’s staring too long at a piece of chocolate because it reminds you of a Tuesday night when everything felt soft and simple and safe. Sometimes it’s opening an old message thread, not to reread anything in particular—but just to feel the shape of their silence.

And yet, we reduce all that to: I miss you.

“I miss you” is the paper napkin of emotional expression—folded too neatly, soggy under pressure, and absolutely useless when you really need to clean something up. That’s why we need poetry. Because poetry doesn’t ask you to be emotionally tidy. Poetry is extra. Poetry walks in with a dramatic cape, too much eyeliner, and absolutely no chill.

Poetry says things like,

“Your absence is an echo that fills the quiet spaces in my heart.”

And I’m like—okay Sylvia Plath, calm down. But also: same.

Because sometimes, it’s not just that someone left.

Sometimes they’re still here. Right there. Sitting next to you on the couch, answering your questions, living their life—and yet, not really with you.

You miss their laughter while they’re still laughing, just… not for you anymore.

You miss their presence while they’re still brushing their teeth in your sink.

There’s a strange kind of ache that comes from ghosting while still present. It’s the sound of a connection short-circuiting, the flicker of a once-bright gaze that now skims past you like background noise. And the wild part? Sometimes you’re the one who’s disappeared.

Not because you don’t love them. Not because you’re cruel. Just because you’re tired. Or lost. Or busy surviving your own chaos. You didn’t mean to go silent. You just forgot how to speak their language. And maybe—while you were buffering—they were quietly sending out flares. They were texting with intention, showing up in small ways, asking if you were okay. Not always in words, but in the way they lingered when you looked away. The way they kept showing up. And you missed it. Not because you don’t care. But because life got loud, and your own internal monologue drowned out the sound of someone softly saying, “Hey… I miss you.”

And then there’s the grief kind of missing—the one we rarely talk about because it’s too heavy for small talk. That ache that doesn’t scroll your feed or sit across the table. The kind that doesn’t ghost you—it graves you. It rewrites your routines, your silence, your whole nervous system. It moves in and makes itself at home inside your bones. That’s a different kind of absence. That’s missing someone who can’t come back.

It’s not the central story of this piece—but it deserves a seat at the table. If your “I miss you” lives in the space between this world and the next—if it speaks into a quiet that never answers back—you’re not invisible here. I see you. And the ache you carry is its own kind of courage.

But most of the time? The person you miss is still right here. Their toothbrush is still in your bathroom. Their name is still in your phone. The memories are still fresh, still raw, still reachable. And yet, something’s been lost. The ease. The spark. The effort. You miss the way they used to look at you. The way they reached for your hand without thinking. You miss the jokes. The rhythm. The way they used to laugh—and the way you used to laugh, too.

Sometimes the saddest thing you can say is, “I miss the way we used to laugh.”

Not because it’s over.

But because no one noticed it slipping away.

And if we’re really honest, sometimes someone else is missing us. And we haven’t been present enough to notice. We’ve been too busy numbing, scrolling, working, healing, avoiding. We’ve gone quiet—not on purpose, but just long enough for someone else to wonder where we went.

But it’s not too late to return.

It’s not too late to say the thing.

To send the message.

To turn off the noise and speak clearly for once.

I miss the way we used to laugh.

I didn’t mean to drift.

Can we find our way back?

Because “I miss you” doesn’t have to be the end of the story.

Sometimes, it’s the moment you remember how to begin again.

We miss people in big, dramatic ways—and in the tiniest, quietest ways that no one else sees. We miss them with bad metaphors, unsent texts, voice memos we save but never play. We miss them through songs, through chocolate, through silence. We miss who they were. We miss who we were when they loved us out loud. And we miss the feeling of being known in our everyday.

So yes—in English, we say “I miss you.”

But in real life?

We scroll past their texts and reread them anyway.

We open the photo album when no one’s watching.

We sit with the ache and we name it softly.

And when we’re ready, we whisper:

Let’s try again.

Because the ache doesn’t always mean it’s over.

Sometimes it just means… we still care.

And sometimes, that’s enough to begin again.