Primalsoup

The one who was better in parentheses

The Star That Died Before It Reached Earth
Some stories burn brightest before they ever begin.

Image Credit

Before the apps. Before the swiping. Before everyone turned into product managers of their own love lives.. there was the internet.
And if you were young and a little lonely and halfway good at words, it was enough.

We met on one of those early social media platforms, half blog, half bulletin board, where people posted half-baked thoughts and sent hearts to strangers they’d never meet. He liked one of my posts about music. I liked his status about an author I hadn’t read but now claimed to love.

We started messaging. Every day. Then all the time.

We shared songs. Mostly indie, mostly sad.
He once sent me a line that said: “I’m not good at people. But I’d like to be good at you.”
I pretended I’d read it somewhere before. I hadn’t.
I still don’t know if he made it up.

He made me laugh, the dry, typed kind of laughter that lives in parentheses. I’d spend real time crafting replies, not to impress him, but because I’d found a rhythm, this weirdly brilliant dialogue where I got to be sharper, funnier, warmer than I usually felt in person. I think I became a writer there, one text at a time, sending versions of myself I hadn’t met yet.

We never spoke of feelings. Just… stayed in orbit.

And then, somehow, fate (or HR) moved him to Chennai.

We met at a coffee shop that no longer exists. I wore something I’d overthought. He was taller than I’d expected. Kinder, too. But something was off. The current that had powered months of conversation just… sputtered.

He smiled. I smiled. We talked. But there were no parentheses.
Just pauses.

I think we both knew it.
That the version of us that worked best was made of light and delay and digital timing.
In person, we had nothing to buffer us from each other’s silences.

After that, we kept in touch. Sort of.
He’d send a “Landed” or a “Boarding now.”
No more songs. No more poems.
Just status updates.

Eventually, even those stopped.

I used to check if he was online.
Not to talk.
Just to confirm he was real.

Some loves burn like a star.
Not so they can be held.
Just so you remember what light looked like
before it disappeared.

This is part of How I Did Not Meet Your Father, a recurring series in which I mine my non-existent love life for content, gently, and with context.