Wish You Were Here

The coffee pot used to empty faster when he was there.

There were mornings when I didn’t even notice him pour the first cup. I’d be half-awake, hands busy, already moving through the day on muscle memory. Then I’d turn toward the pot and feel that small, irrational disappointment when it was lighter than it should’ve been.

It became a joke, but also a comfort—predictable in the way that mattered. The way you don’t need to ask if something will happen because it always does. He’d lift the pot, pour the remaining few burnt drops into his mug with a smile.

He wouldn’t drink it all at once, and not in a way that felt rude. Just enough for someone to eventually notice, laugh, and say there was no way it should already be gone. He drank his coffee hot and black. No creamer, no sugar, no nonsense. Like it was something you met head-on, not something you softened first.

I think now that what I loved most was never having to wonder where he was, because his presence made the days feel less mundane. We always had each other to talk to and brighten the day.

The other day, standing alone in my kitchen, the coffee cooling untouched in my mug, I remembered the way he never waited for it to cool. It led me to think about how some people make the world feel steadier just by moving through it the same way every time. Yesterday at work, I caught myself thinking about it. How comforting it was to know he was around to help or talk. The way he belonged so easily in the same spaces I still move through every day without him.

Sometimes, when at work, the smell of burnt coffee makes my heart pound, hoping he's somewhere nearby. The faint bitterness that lingers in the air long after the pot has been turned off. It settles into the room the same way memory does—quiet, uninvited, impossible to ignore.

I take a sip of my coffee and think, briefly and irrationally: This is wrong. Too sweet. Not hot enough. Just bland. I drink mine differently now, but my body still remembers his way. Hot. Black. Immediate.

It’s strange how love teaches you habits you don’t realize you’ve learned until you’re standing alone in a kitchen, tasting someone else’s absence.

I know logically that it’s over. Whatever we were has ended or changed into something I no longer know how to reach. I know this the way you know facts about the weather—true, impersonal, unavoidable.

But my heart doesn’t know that.

Loss is supposed to be final, but grief lingers, convincing us that something might still be waiting just beyond our reach.

Absence sounds like footsteps that don’t arrive. Like a phone that doesn’t buzz. Like the quiet certainty that if you turned your head fast enough, you might catch a glimpse of what used to be there.

I tell myself I’m not waiting. I tell myself I’ve accepted what is. And maybe I have—mostly. But my heart still lives in the in-between. The place where belonging doesn’t vanish just because proximity does.

It’s exhausting to carry both truths at once. Knowing something is over while still feeling like it isn’t finished.

My heart still listens for footsteps that aren’t coming. Still measures time by how the coffee pot empties. Still believes, quietly and stubbornly, that some things don’t end, they just step out of the room for a while.

Outside the window, rain begins to fall-steady and unhurried- mirroring the quiet persistence of memory and longing.

The rain doesn’t hurry me. It just falls, and I let myself miss him.

I remember a storm.

We were sprawled across the living room, my legs draped over his waist, the kind of lazy closeness you don’t question when it feels right. Outside, the sky cracked, lightning flashing, thunder rolling so loud it felt like it shook the walls. We looked at each other at the same moment, that quiet, wordless recognition passing between us.

Do you want to stand in the rain?

I smiled before I even finished the question. He said yes without hesitation.

We raced downstairs in our pajamas, laughing, breathless, throwing open the back door like we were late for something. The rain came down hard and fast, soaking the patio, the night alive with sound. We ducked under the umbrella and pulled each other close, the fabric drumming above us.

I tucked my head into the crook of his shoulder. He held me like that was exactly where I belonged.

There was nothing planned about it. Nothing careful. Just a moment chosen on instinct, spontaneous and perfect, and so achingly real that it still lives in me years later. Romance without performance. Comfort without explanation.

Now, the coffee goes cold while I stand there remembering.

Outside, rain starts again—softer this time, steadier. I watch it fall, knowing that some things end, and some things stay with you. Not loud or demanding.

I don’t know if he ever thinks about moments like that. If storms still pull him outside. If rain still reminds him of the moments we shared. I don’t know if he remembers the way the umbrella rattled, or how easily we fit together beneath it.

What I do know is this: the body remembers before the mind lets go. It remembers where it felt safe, where it felt chosen, where it felt, briefly and beautifully, at home.

The rain eventually slows. The world keeps moving. And I finish my coffee, even though it’s gone cold, because leaving it untouched feels worse. I have to force the last sip down as my throat tightens and tears threaten to come.

Some things don’t return. Some things don’t resolve. But they shape you anyway. Quietly. Permanently.

Like rain on an umbrella.

Like coffee gone too soon.

I watch raindrops slide down the window, my reflection wavering in the glass, like everything else that stays a little while before it disappears.