Still waiting.

The words echo in my mind, hollow and unforgiving, as I sit at the large granite desk. My hands relentlessly move across the pages—orders, edicts, decrees—one after the other.

What day is it? What is the hour? The passage of time feels irrelevant now. The task is endless. The time stretches on.

Pen to paper would have been enough. A note, a word, a letter. Like it used to be. Her love that was so often bled onto parchment through the elegant motion of her delicate fingers as if the very ink she used carried a piece of her soul.

One letter would have been enough.

But I know. I know the letter isn’t coming. Not anymore. The silence—every moment of it—feels like a blade twisting slowly in my chest. It has lingered so long now that I’ve grown numb to it, though its sting never fades. It’s a wound that refuses to heal, a constant reminder that so many good things never last.

And still, here I sit.

Still waiting.

Still waiting for something that will never come. Anything to tell me she’s out there, waiting as I wait, longing as I long. But the world moves on, indifferent. And so my work carries on.

There is no comfort here. Only work. I keep going, because that is all there is left for me to do.

No tears. Only a break in my heart.

The break is silent, but it is real. I can feel it. It sends tremors down my spine, making my hands tremble with a coldness that reaches deep into my bones. Ice from the tear freezes my veins.

But only for a moment.

“I’m going to miss her.”

And I carry on.

I was forged in the fire.