I lost a piece of my heart.

Not just any piece but something that took me hours to pour out on a blank sheet of paper, filling it up with words that came straight from my soul. I was so taken by simply noting it down that I continued writing without seeing that the unclasped pages underneath were floating away, one by one, out of my grasp.

I couldn't even get a chance to read what I wrote that day as a gust of wind ruffled all those pages, spreading them far apart for me to gather again.

Just like that, whatever I wrote was gone. I lost it and my heart churned as I couldn't get a chance to read it even once.

Those pages are scattered somewhere, possibly everywhere, and even though I have polished my lantern and looked for them multiple times, I simply can't seem to find them.

Now, I regret the intensity of that moment. The very feeling when my heart started beating like a trumpet, singing out such beautiful notes that even I hadn't heard before. Such music that I yearned to clasp tightly in my hands even though I knew it was uncontainable.

So taken by the storm of words inside me, I simply let it all flow without seeing the form it took on paper. So absorbed in writing them down that I forgot to read them and clasp them in my memory so that if I ever lost them, I could at least translate what my heart sang to me. Even if I couldn't dredge out those words lost, I could still form an imitation of what I heard that evening.

Days turned into nights, and nights into weeks. It's been almost a month since I lost those pages forever. With them went a piece of my heart and possibly the greatest truth about me that I enclosed within.

My grief knows no bounds as I lament the loss of those words like a mother would lament for her lost little child. Some people would call it idiocy to cry over spilled milk, over pages that were lost by my own fault, but how am I to console this heart that keeps taking me back to that windy autumn evening? Back to the hollows where those remnants of parchment and ink are still somewhere, hidden from view, fluttering out of my reach...

Scattered like those auburn leaves, the truth that poured out of me that evening is lost, too.

Lost somewhere in the endless voids of our existence, in an unknown deep well that I can't fish it out from. Lost because I couldn't hold it close for one fleeting moment and by a spurn of fate or destiny or maybe call it God's will, it was lost forever.

Erased from my mind like bleach washing out ink stains, or tides dispersing the impressions on the sand.

Gone.

Forever.

Perhaps God did not want me to see such glaring truths about my heart and soul. Perhaps not reading those pages has some betterment hidden within. But how am I to convince my heart, which still cries out, beseeching me to look for its missing piece?

They say some pictures are worth a thousand words. But those words... Those words were worth a thousand pictures, a thousand unlived memories beating inside me that I managed to write down but failed to keep close.

Thus, I lost a piece of my heart. And I know I will not get it back.

Humans are, by nature, ungrateful. Instead of being grateful for the blessings they have, they pursue the unattainable, inflicting their lives with misery and suffering. Perhaps my pursuit of those lost words is nothing but a self-inflicted misery, a question that will never have an answer, a hope that is against hope itself.

Despite knowing this fully, I fail to give up the search of those scattered pages. I fail to let myself rest and be at peace with fate's intervention.

So now, I am still standing in the nave of hope, looking above at the stars. My eyes are ever vigilant, watching that if one of those glittering specks falls from the sky, I may wish upon it, asking for nothing more than to regain what I have lost.

Until I have regained it, I will continue to live in ambiguity, not knowing the truth my heart revealed that evening.

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