Expired Stars

I still see us
like stars—
burning quietly
in the back of my mind’s sky.

But even stars lie,
don’t they?
What glows
may already be gone.

You left—
long before I let myself know.
But your light,
your laughter,
still arrived
like postcards from a sun
that forgot to stop shining.

I held on to brightness,
mistook it for presence.
I named our past
after constellations,
tracing love
between dots that no longer burned.

You were a galaxy
I couldn’t stop orbiting,
even when the center
was ash.

The truth took years
to travel.
Because hearts,
like telescopes,
don’t always know
what they’re really seeing.

You had already turned
into silence.
I just kept
looking at the afterglow,
and calling it you.

But now—
I understand:
not all light means life.
Not all shimmer is still burning.

Some loves
are just echoes
of the fire they once were—
gorgeous,
distant,
already
gone.

- Khushi Kaul