It was in a quiet corner of a dimly lit restaurant — the kind where time forgets to move — that I found myself in conversation with a stranger.

We spoke of love, of the ache it leaves behind, of the cruel tenderness with which it comes and goes.

And in a moment of weary surrender, I whispered,

“Perhaps love is not meant for me. Perhaps it is a song I was never meant to dance to in this lifetime.”

The stranger paused, their gaze steady, as if they were seeing something ancient in me — a truth I had long buried beneath disappointment and ache.

Then, with a voice that felt both human and celestial, they said,

“Or perhaps, my dear, the Universe has written a tale for you so extraordinary, it cannot allow you to linger in mediocrity.

Perhaps your heart has been broken not as punishment, but as preparation — carved and chiseled by sorrow so it may one day contain something magnificent.

Perhaps your love story is not a fleeting chapter, but an epic — one that will require every tear you have ever shed, every goodbye that left you trembling, every night you have stared into the dark wondering why.

For only when you have known love’s cruelty will you recognize its truth.

Only when your soul has been both fire and ash will it be ready to hold something eternal.”

Their words lingered like smoke — haunting, holy.

And in that sacred pause between what has been and what is yet to come, I felt something shift.

Perhaps love is not absent from my story.

Perhaps it is simply waiting for the right moment — when the Universe deems my heart ready for the magnitude of the love it has promised me.

Not a love that comes to teach or to test,

But a love that comes to stay.