What I Mean When I Say Nothing
I speak in silences,
because the words I’d need
would fall like birds with broken wings
tender, trembling,
unsure if they’re even meant to fly.
I am not asking you to love me.
But I am loving,
in the spaces where your voice is not,
in the days that pass between replies,
in the echo of a laugh we once shared
as if it were a promise.
There is a version of us
that lives in the soft light
between your retreat and return—
where I am not just warmth
you reach for
in your winter.
I do not want to be
a shelter you forget
when the sky clears.
I want to be seen
the way I see you—
with all your pasts,
your paused griefs,
your unfinished thoughts.
I want more
than evenings that vanish into memory.
More than almost.
More than maybe.
I have rehearsed how to need
without clinging,
how to stay
without vanishing.
But even patience grows tired
of waiting for the door to stay open.
Still—
this is not an ultimatum.
It is a quiet truth,
offered without a bow:
I am here.
I feel.
I hope.
But I will not keep knocking
if the house
was never meant
to be mine
Because then I will speak voices
that will be heard.
Voices that reach not just your ears,
but the still places in you
that long to be met.
Voices that reach
for everything I stand for—
my softness,
my boundaries,
my light.
I know when to leave.
I know when silence means more
than the words you never say.
I know the difference
between being wanted
and being needed.
Need is a hunger.
It disappears when fed.
But want—
Want is a choice made in fullness.
Want is presence
without lack.
If you want me
not because you are lonely,
but because your life is full
and still
you find space for me—
not to fill the hole in your heart,
not to be a band-aid
for your quiet griefs,
but to sit beside you
when your soul is already at peace,
and say:
I add to this
without holding it together—
Then that,
that is where I want to be.
