The first time I saw you, you still had your dark hair.
I knew of you but not who you were.
That version of you felt like someone I was meant to admire
from afar, someone I could watch without ever daring to get too
close.
I can’t remember the first time we spoke.
But I remember the first time you said my name –
how gently it left your mouth,
how strange it felt to be known by you at all.
How could someone so composed,
so anchored to their own gravity,
want to know me?
You spoke to me,
about something small I’d told you.
I felt special.
You cared, more than you usually let yourself.
You wanted to know me.
And then you uttered the words that would haunt
me. Words that pulled you far away
but still within my reach.
You were tethered to me for months.
I knew you more intimately than I knew myself.
You let yourself collapse into my comfort,
into my embrace.
I felt your safety,
and you felt mine.
Your presence lingered on my skin
when we weren’t together.
I felt you in my throat every time I spoke,
as if my words belonged to you.
I saw you in everything –
your face imprinted on the streets of the city,
and on the walls of the rooms I entered.
You made me whole –
whole of myself,
whole of the person you cared to know.
The words you uttered lived in the pit of my
stomach. The truth that you couldn’t see
was written in my eyes every time you looked at
me. I held you tighter every time you embraced
me. I knew you weren’t forever.
I asked you what this world we built meant to
you, what we meant to each other.
Then you uttered your words clearly
again, asking me to understand them –
as if they didn’t choke me
everytime I thought about you.
Nothing changed for you.
My whole world collapsed,
and I didn’t have you to protect me.
You were something to me
in a way that you will never understand.
In a way that I couldn’t tell you.
I don’t know what love is.
I don’t believe that’s what this ever was.
But you convinced me it could have been.
You live in my memories
and in my heart.
I see you in a light
that’s not as bright
but still warm.
The walls you built around yourself
will one day fall.
I’ll watch from afar,
as your words fall silent
and you find in someone
what you could not find in me.
