Your name still lives in my mouth,
like a word I whisper too often,
soft at the edges, sacred at the root.
There is still a chair in my memory you never sit in,
a poem I am yet to give you,
a version of us we are yet to unfold.
You are still the silence that speaks the loudest.
I never stop holding the memory of you with care.
You are not a detour. You are a doorway.
One I hover before like a prayer I am too afraid to answer.
And still, I return to it.
Sometimes in memory, sometimes in longing,
wondering what might live on the other side,
if I could only stay.
Because even now, in the running, in the chaos, in the spaces I disappear into–
you are someone I see.
Not just the kind of seeing that happens with eyes,
but the kind that happens with recognition.
The kind that says: I know you. I want to know you.
With you, I don't want to perform my strength.
You make me want to lay my armour down,
and I do not know how to be held without it.
With you, staying isn't survival.
It is a choice.
A becoming.
I want to sit in the quiet beside you and choose.
A truth I am too scared to step into.
But even in my absence, you remain.
Like breath.
Like ache.
Like a sentence I haven’t finished writing.
Maybe we’ll keep finding each other;
not as strangers, but as versions of ourselves
with steadier hands.
Maybe love was never meant to be a destination,
but a holy in-between
where we practice arrival.
You make staying look like something worth learning.
You make love feel like a place I can live.
And for that, I will always be grateful,
not just for you,
but for what you make possible in me.
For reminding me that maybe—just maybe—I am built for this after all.
What we share does not vanish just because I am learning how to arrive.
And a part of me,
quiet, patient, still,
has always known
that the version of me you hold in your gaze
is not a fantasy,
but a truth I am finally willing to inhabit.
I am not waiting for someday anymore.
I am here—
learning how to stay.