“I miss you” is too small

I say it every day.

Sometimes out loud.
Sometimes in my head.
Sometimes into nothing.

I miss you.

Two words. Soft. Polite. Almost tidy.

And they are nowhere near big enough.

“I miss you” sounds like absence.
What it feels like is collapse.

It’s the moment my chest caves in when I see something she would have loved.
It’s the instinct to turn and tell her something before remembering I can’t.
It’s the way my body still reaches for a person who no longer exists in the world.

“I miss you” doesn’t touch that.

It doesn’t touch the violence of realising she will never walk into a room again.
It doesn’t touch the physical ache of wanting to hear her voice.
It doesn’t touch the endlessness of knowing this is forever.

“I miss you” sounds like a sentence.
What it is, is a state.

I don’t miss her occasionally.
I live inside missing.

I miss her when I wake up.
I miss her when I eat.
I miss her when something good happens.
I miss her when nothing happens.

I miss her in the middle of conversations.
I miss her in my body.
I miss her in my sleep.

And still… all I have is that tiny phrase.

I miss you.

It feels like nothing.
And it is my entire universe.

I think part of why it hurts so much is because “I miss you” doesn’t do anything.

It doesn’t bring her back.
It doesn’t move time.
It doesn’t change the ending.

And I hate doing nothing.

There is something in me that needs to move, to reach, to build, to hold, to continue.
Something that refuses to let love just… stop.

So I write.

Not because writing heals grief.
Not because writing fixes anything.

I write because she started a story that didn’t get to finish.

And loving her means I am still inside that story.

When I write about her, I am not remembering her.
I am continuing her.

I am carrying her forward into language, into breath, into the world that keeps going without her.

Writing is the only way I know how to turn missing into action.

It’s the only way I know how to make “I miss you” move.

Every sentence is a refusal to let her become past tense.
Every page is me saying: you were here, you mattered, you changed me, you are still changing me.

“I miss you” on its own feels like standing still in a burning house.

Writing is me gathering what I can and walking back into the world with her in my arms.

I wish “I miss you” could bring her back.

I say it like a spell sometimes.
Like if I say it the right way, enough times, something might shift.

It never does.

She never comes back.

The words always fall to the floor.

And yet… they keep coming.

Because missing her is not something that happens to me.

It is something I am.

“I miss you” is too small for what this is.

But it is the truest thing I have.

And some days, it is all the language there is.