I do not name it—
this tremble beneath the ribs
when you pass like wind over still wheat
I do not name it,
because names are weapons,
and I do not wish to wound you.
You sit across from me
and speak of rain, of early evenings,
the way the moon sometimes feels closer
on certain nights.
I answer with coffee, or a cocktail,
with the turning of pages you don’t ask me to read,
with the metaphor of my coat
laid wordlessly across your shoulders.
There is a glass wall in you
that no hand can touch—
I see it in the way your voice falters
when joy tries to find its place.
Someone has broken the frame
where you once kept your trust,
and now it lies in you like a dark tide,
retreating only when you think no one sees.
But I see.
So I do not speak
of the way your hair catches the late light
like a flame just born.
I do not speak
of how the sound of your laughter
makes my chest forget how to ache.
Instead, I stay.
I carry the heavy boxes without being asked.
I remember your favorite coffee.
I leave stories and sunrises on cold mornings to make you smile
Or laugh.
You are not alone.
I sit with your silences
as though they are music.
Love should never knock
when the door has been nailed shut.
So I wait outside,
not like a beggar,
but like a tree—
rooted, patient, bearing fruit
that may never be tasted.
There is no promise.
No dream held hostage.
Only this:
That when the world grows too loud,
and the ache in your chest blooms again,
you will remember the man
who never asked
for what he could not hold.
If one day,
your eyes turn and see me—
not as a shadow beside you
but as light that has been waiting—
then I will open my arms
as if I had never closed them.
Until then,
I will love you
in the way the tide loves the shore—
never claiming,
always returning.
Broken Author 