#ntrllghts

I love you.

There, a small confession left on the table

like a knife that forgot whose side it was on.

I know my hands are clumsy 

with tenderness.

I hold you the way a storm holds rain,

too much,

too sudden,

sometimes falling where it shouldn’t.

Still…

I love you.

Not the polished, storybook version.

Not the kind that always says the right things or knows when silence would have been kinder.

Mine is the crooked kind.

The kind that stays

when the room is full of ghosts

while every chair remembers arguments.

The kind that waits in a dark kitchen

long after the lights are out,

listening for your footsteps.

a sinner waiting for mercy

he’s not sure he deserves.

You have seen the worst rooms in me.

The locked ones.

The loud ones.

The ones where anger paces the floor

and pride pretends to be king.

And still,

some reckless, stubborn part of me

keeps reaching for you

like gravity forgot its master.

I wish I were better at this.

Better at holding you

without letting my shadows crowd the doorway.

Better at loving you

in ways that feel like warmth

instead of weather.

But the truth is simpler,

and maybe more dangerous.

I love you

the way a tide loves the shore,

returning,

returning,

returning…

even after the rocks cut it open.

I may not be good at it.

But I have searched every quiet corner of myself

for the switch

that would turn you off inside my chest.

And there isn’t one.

Just this pulse.

Just this stubborn, foolish,

whisper that says,

her.

Always

-excerpt-

she’d always looked most beautiful when she forgot to perform.

When she wasn’t posing.

Wasn’t trying.

Wasn’t carrying anything.

Just being.

The realization lingered.

Then something else arrived.

A thought so simple he almost missed it.

He missed her.

Not the version from twenty years ago.

Not the version before grief.

Not the version before mistakes.

Not the version before confusion.

Her.

The woman she was now.

The realization startled him.

Because all night he’d been looking backward.

And suddenly he was looking forward.

Wondering what she was reading.

Wondering what she’d been thinking lately.

Wondering what dreams she still carried.

Wondering what fears she never spoke aloud.

Wondering who she was becoming.

The questions felt familiar.

-excerpt-

The memory made him smile.

Because he’d forgotten how often he used to watch her sleep.

Not in a strange way.

In a grateful way.

The way people look at things they love.

The way people silently thank God for something they don’t deserve.

The memory faded.

And another appeared.

Years later.

The same room.

The same bed.

Different weight.

Different burdens.

Different silence.

The realization came immediately.

This was where the distance became undeniable.

Not because they fought here.

Because they didn’t.

Not because they hated each other.

Because they couldn’t find each other.

The room knew the truth.

How many nights had they climbed into bed exhausted?

Not angry.

Exhausted.

How many times had one of them wanted to talk,

But the hour felt too late?

How many times had one of them wanted comfort,

But didn’t know how to ask?

How many times had they both laid awake listening to the same silence and hearing completely different things?

He sat carefully on the edge of the mattress.

The room growing impossibly still.

And suddenly he remembered one particular night.

Not because it was extraordinary.

Because it wasn’t.

She lay beside him.

The room dark.

The house asleep.

And after a long silence she’d asked:

“Are you happy?”

The memory hit him hard.

Because he remembered freezing.

Remembered staring into darkness.

Remembered not knowing how to answer.

Not because the answer was no.

Because the answer was complicated.

The business was already struggling.

Though he hadn’t admitted it.

The pressure already building.

The shame already forming.

The fear already growing.

And he remembered eventually answering:

“I don’t know.”

The words echoed through the room.

Painfully honest.

Painfully incomplete.

The memory continued.

She hadn’t replied immediately.

Just lay there quietly.

Thinking.

Then eventually she whispered:

“Me neither.”

He closed his eyes.

God.

There it was.

The moment.

Not the moment everything broke.

The moment everything was revealed.

Two people.

Lying inches apart.

Admitting they were lost.

And neither of them understanding the other was saying exactly the same thing.

The realization settled over him like sunlight.

Because now he could hear what she had actually meant.

Not:

“I don’t love you.”

Not:

“I want something else.”

Not:

“I’m leaving.”

What she’d meant was:

“I’m struggling.”

“I’m hurting.”

“I’m trying to understand who I’ve become.”

The same thing he’d been trying to say.

The same thing he’d been unable to say.

The room seemed to exhale.

The years softening.

The misunderstandings unraveling.

Thread by thread.

And suddenly He understood why this room hurt more than any other.

Because this was where they were closest.

Physically.

And sometimes furthest.

Emotionally.

Not because they wanted distance.

Because they didn’t know how to cross it anymore.

The bed sat quietly before him.

A witness.

A monument.

A battlefield without enemies.

Despite the image you project

I bury my name beneath the soil

Deep within the ground

Stretching the gap between us.

Forget a regret,I feel no remorse

I’ve bottled my indifference far too long

You haven’t earned what you desire

And the space you hold in me has shriveled to almost nothing.

I want to believe you merit my attention

But you reflect all I can’t stand.

Gaze sharply at the truth before you

Hope and faith have drained from me.

Because the moment I stumble, you retreat in sorrow

What do you expect of me? I’m just a kid swallowed too deep.

My defenses are towering, 

unyielding, forever steep

I observe from above all the secrets you guard

Claim all you want that you saw it coming

That I’d reveal what most could never touch.

I’m frostier than the rest

It’s my distinction.

You scheme, attempting to expose light within my shadows

But this is my existence. 

Step away and vanish,

No more battles. 

Seek them in other men’s souls,

You overestimate your cunning

I tire of petals falling from my mouth,

soft promises that drift and dissolve

before they land in your hands.

Now my words are scaffolds,

steel beams strung between thought and deed,

and every motion I make

is a pulse proving the pulse behind the promise.

Watch me,

not with hope, but with eyes wide enough to judge

let your doubt carve its canyon into the air.

I will fill it with the weight of my intent,

with steps that echo longer than any echo of speech.

You may not believe me yet.

Perhaps you never did.

But let your sight carry witness

to the quiet storm I raise in the soil of my own making.

Then you will know

words were never enough,

but now, flesh and bone,

Somewhere, in a version of the world made of glass oceans,

I am a lighthouse with a cracked rib of light,

and you,

you are the tide that refuses instruction.

You come anyway.

In another, we are two moths

stitched from midnight and sugar,

circling a flame we swear we’ve never seen,

yet it hums our names

like a lullaby we almost remember.

We are reckless with gravity.

We fall toward each other in languages without words,

in gardens where the fruit bites back,

in cities that rearrange their streets

just to watch us collide.

And every time,

every impossible, 

miswritten, 

out-of-order time,

there’s that moment:

the pause in the air,

like the universe holding its breath

between heartbeats,

when your soul tilts,

just slightly,

and recognizes the shape of mine.

We pretend surprise.

We always pretend.

But our hands…

they move like they’ve done this

a thousand endings and beginnings ago,

like muscle memory carved into existence,

like a song buried in the marrow

that only plays when we’re close.

There are versions where we ruin it,

versions where we run,

versions where we almost, 

almost,

convince ourselves this isn’t inevitable.

But inevitability is patient.

It waits in the folds of time

like a book pressed flower 

that never fades,

like a compass that spins wildly

until it finds one true direction,

you.

Me.

Us, again.

And when it happens,

when it always happens,

it’s not fireworks,

not chaos,

not even fate being loud…

it’s quieter.

It’s the soft, terrifying certainty

of coming home

to a place you’ve never been,

and knowing,

with a kind of beautiful dread,

you were never

meant

Even when it cuts, I am still your husband, a vow standing in a storm, leaning into the wind instead of away from it.

I will undress my soul without forcing your hands. I will pour out love without chaining it to return. I will name the fear without turning you into its weapon.

I am not asking you to be mended. Not asking grief to loosen its teeth. Not even asking for your choosing. I am asking for a flicker of you, a pulse in the dark, proof that the gravity between us has not gone silent.

What hurts is that your absence moves like a tide, pulling away in waves while you ask me to stay anchored, unmoving, where you left me.

It can be grief and I can still ache for the warmth of your orbit.

These are not opposites. They are two stars burning in the same sky. I am not asking you to rise on my time.

I am asking you not to erase me from the night while you fall apart inside it.

And this doubt circling my chest, this careful measuring of my own love, is not hunger for control.

It is a man standing too close to the edge, trying not to become cold stone, trying not to vanish, trying not to wound the one he would still walk into the dark for.