The Sun

There was a man, who was as warm as the sun. He didn’t just walk into a room—he entered it, like sunlight slipping through cracks in the blinds, flooding every corner, lifting the weight of whatever darkness lingered before. His smile? It was the kind of smile that seemed to burst from somewhere deep inside him, pulling at the edges of his mouth until his eyes crinkled in that unmistakable way. You know the look, the kind that says more than words could ever manage. It wasn’t just a smile; it was an embrace, like you were the reason for it, like he was smiling just for you.

When he hugged you, you felt it in your bones. His arms wrapped around you with the kind of intensity that made you think, for just a second, that maybe he could climb inside you, pull you apart and put you back together all at once. And for that brief moment, nothing outside of that hug mattered. There was safety there. Warmth. It was like being seen, truly seen.

I still remember his laugh. It had a sound that clung to you, like the echo of a song you’d forgotten you loved. And he laughed often, as if everything in life had some kind of joy to offer, as if the world itself conspired to make him happy. His joy was infectious, like a breeze that carried you along with it, even when you tried to stand still.

But it wasn’t just his laugh or his smile. It was his presence. He had this essence about him—an energy, maybe—that made you notice him, even before you meant to. He was the kind of man who seemed to fill the room just by being in it. You didn’t even need to see him; you felt him. That’s the kind of man he was. People gravitated toward him, not because he asked for attention, but because his presence was impossible to ignore. He was warmth incarnate, and who doesn’t want to stand a little closer to the sun?

He loved big, loved tightly, as if he knew something the rest of us didn’t, as if he understood how fleeting everything truly is. When he loved, he held on like it was the only thing keeping the earth beneath him from splitting open. He didn’t love halfway; there were no conditions, no limits. But when it was over, it was all over. His love was not the kind you could temper or ease away from. It was either everything or nothing, no in-between.

I think about that sometimes—how much we took for granted. He’s the kind of man you should have always taken a call from. You should have let him kiss you too much, because maybe those kisses were more than just kisses. Maybe they were goodbyes before we knew it. You should have let him stay, even when the moment felt too full, too intense, too much like forever. You should have sat in his presence longer, let the warmth linger just a little more. But we never do that, do we? We only realize these things once the warmth is gone.

His warmth was snuffed out by something hotter, something none of us saw coming. And the world every day feels a little colder because of it. There’s no one to fill the space he left behind, no one to bring the sun into the room like he did. I think we all feel it—this absence that doesn’t announce itself, but you know it’s there. And no matter how much time passes, it’s the kind of cold that never quite leaves your bones.