This is a long overdue apology. A ghost itself, haunting me for 365 days, drifting between what was and what could have been. One year of silence, of shadows.

I remember you as something delicate and pure. The sweetest girl I have ever met. You were never meant to be a footnote in my careless narrative, never meant to be left suspended in the liminal space between almost and never.

Your eyes, they were full of possibility, unbridled hope, looking at me like I was something extraordinary when I knew I was anything but. I was a storm you didn’t see coming. A silence that would consume your tender expectations. I left without explanation, without the courtesy of a proper goodbye. Just a ghost, slipping between the margins of what we could have been.

I was simply cruel. My silence was a violence. A wound I carved into your tender heart, believing you would understand the unspoken rules of a game you never agreed to play. That message you sent months after I disappeared —God, it shattered me. Your raw vulnerability laid bare. I realized then that for you, this was never a game. For you, this was a possibility of something real, something sacred.

I should have given you closure. I should have told you definitively. Yes or no, stay or go. Instead, I chose the coward’s path, leaving you hanging in an endless maybe. Your heart trembling like a leaf in an uncertain wind.

I’m sorry, Clare. I’m truly sorry. Not just with words, but with the heavy weight of understanding the damage I’ve caused. Sorry for treating your heart like a disposable thing, when you deserved to be held, to be certain, to be chosen.

You thanked me for finding you before. But the truth is, you were the one who saw me. Truly saw me. When no one else did.