When light touches your skin, it is already eight minutes and twenty seconds old.
Which means, by the time you felt warm, the warmth had already begun its journey.

Because sunlight takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach Earth, travelling at 300,000 km/second, crossing 150 million kilometres just to arrive quietly on your skin.

And you, call it a morning.

As if it hadn’t fought through voids, brushed past comets and silence, carried fire in its ribs just to land on the curve of your shoulder.

And I think that says something.
Maybe love is like that, too.
Already on its way.
Even if you don’t feel it yet.

So when the air around you feels hollow, when your name sounds like a question in your own head, when no one calls back, when your messages sit unread, it doesn’t mean love isn’t coming.

It might just be in transit.

Maybe it’s stopping somewhere to gather courage, or trying to read the map with shaky hands.

Because some things take time.

Even the sun, in its hushed faithfulness, must voyage through space before it reaches your windowpane.

Perhaps love isn’t late.
Maybe it’s just moving at the speed of something certain.

Maybe it’s a whisper leaving someone’s lips right now, that will echo in your name tomorrow.

Maybe it's footsteps turning the last corner, hands rehearsing what to say when they eventually see you.

Maybe love is already wrapping the gift, missing the train, catching the next one, running through the terminals of hesitation, with your name in its pocket and hope in its breath.

It might not arrive with fireworks or with orchestras.
It will simply stand at your doorstep, breathless and real.

And when it finally arrives.
When it lands gently on your side, when it presses its quiet forehead against yours.
You probably won’t ask why it took so long.

You’ll just say, “I always knew you were on your way.”

Because light always comes.
And love?
Love is light.

When it’s real, it takes its time. To cross the distance, to cross doubt.
But it shows up, where it was always meant to. Only because it refuses to get lost.

- Neha Sharma