Dear you,

I never said it. Not once. Not with words.

But I loved you.

I loved you in the way I remembered how you took your coffee. In the way I sat beside you in silence and never felt the need to fill it.

I loved you in the half-finished sentences. In the way I let you talk about other girls and smiled like it didn’t bruise.

I loved you when you didn’t text back, and I still hoped.

I loved you like a secret I didn’t trust the world to hold gently.

You were never mine. Not in the way that counts.

But still, I built altars from our almosts. Hung your name inside every maybe. Turned my own longing into poetry because I was too afraid to make it a question.

What if you said no? What if I lost the version of you I got to keep by never asking for more?

So I didn’t say it.

I just sat next to you in cars, laughed at all the right jokes, and let my heart speak in glances you never looked long enough to catch.

And maybe that was love too. The kind that doesn’t ask to be returned. The kind that lives in the quiet spaces— between texts, between seasons, between the words I never said.

If I had told you, maybe it would’ve changed everything.

Or maybe nothing.

I’ll never know.

But I loved you. That’s the truth.

And maybe that’s enough.