Zephyr

It’s not dramatic.

It’s subtle, like a radio slightly changing frequency

every time the room shifts.

Some days I am certain.

Some days I am barely there at all.

I look for myself in patterns:

how I talk, how I react, what I want, what I swear I don’t want anymore.

But even those don’t hold still.

Even those rewrite themselves without asking.

It feels like identity isn’t missing,

just unstable.

Like it exists, but can’t decide its shape.

And then there is my favourite person.

Not a choice that feels like a choice.

More like gravity noticing me.

When they are close, I feel assembled.

Like the scattered pieces line up for a while

and I can pretend I know who I am.

I speak differently.

Think more clearly.

Feel less like smoke.

But it isn’t steady, it’s conditional.

A message can shift the air.

A delay can change the shape of my thoughts.

Silence can turn everything inward again,

and I start trying to become someone

who won’t be left.

I don’t always notice I’m changing.

I just notice I’m not me anymore

and I don’t know when I stopped being them.

So I rebuild.

Over and over.

From reactions, reflections, fragments of what worked last time.

And I keep wondering

if there is a “me” underneath all of it

or if I am just the space between attachments,

It’s strange, the way someone can occupy your heart so fully without ever laying a claim to it.

I love you quietly, like a secret humming under my skin. A truth I fold and refold inside my chest, each crease more permanent than the last.

You smile, and the weather changes.

Everyone else just feels the breeze; I get the storm.

You don’t know what you are to me.

Or maybe you do, and you pretend not to.

Either way, I play along.

We talk like nothing’s burning.

I laugh at how cute and silly you are,

like my pulse isn’t racing, like I’m not memorizing every little thing you say.

I look at your words and wonder what your voice really sounds like when you’re tired, when you’re happy, when you’re saying something just for me.

I know we are far away.

And I know we’ve never meet because I know I’ll never be good enough enough for you but somehow, you still feel close.

You live in the quiet moments between my thoughts, in the pauses of my day.

You are the feeling I chase without trying to catch it, because I know if I ever held it, it might vanish.

I think of all the ways I’d love you if I were allowed to. I’d learn the map of your mind, the rhythm of your breathing, the meaning behind your silences. I’d build a world around your laugh and call it home. But this is not that kind of story. Not ours.

You are the book I keep rereading, even though I know the ending doesn’t change.

You are the star I wish on, long after I stopped believing in wishes.

You are the “almost” that taught me how much ache a heart can hold.

And still, I carry this love.

Not because I expect it to grow into something,

but because even unreturned, it feels honest.

It feels real.