"Loneliness, My Quiet Love" Poem by Natasa To

Loneliness came softly—

not like a storm,

but like dusk folding its cool hands

over the last warm edge of day.



It sat beside me

without asking permission,

brushed its shoulder against mine

as if it had always known my shape.



I used to fear it—

that hollow echo in the chest,

the way silence grows teeth at night

and bites at restless thoughts.



But loneliness is not always cruel.

Sometimes it is a mirror

held gently to the soul,

showing the places still unkissed by light.



It teaches the language of absence,

the grammar of longing.

It stretches the heart wide enough

for love to one day enter.



And oh—

when love finally comes,

it carries the fingerprints of solitude.

It knows the rooms we built in the dark.



Love is louder, yes—

a bright spill of laughter,

a pulse against the wrist,

a voice saying stay.



But loneliness is the quiet architect.

It carves the space.

It hollows the chamber.

It makes the echo possible.



Without loneliness,

love would have nowhere to land—

no soft interior to bloom inside,

no tender ache to turn into warmth.



So I do not curse the empty nights.

I do not seal the cracks.

I let the moonlight pour through.



Because somewhere between

the solitude and the reaching

is a fragile, glowing truth:



To have felt alone

is to have prepared the heart

for something

vast enough

to fill it.