I want to say it. Every part of me wants to let it out, to name the thing sitting between us like it doesn’t already have teeth. But I know once the words leave my mouth, we can’t unhear them. And something will break. Maybe us.

So I hold it. I carry it like a glass of water, trembling in my hands, hoping you’ll notice before I spill. Hoping you’ll ask without making me say it. Because saying it would mean letting the silence go, and the silence is the only thing keeping us from shattering.

You stay close. Close enough to touch, but never quite reaching. We move around each other like people who remember the fall but won’t speak of the ledge.

We pretend the undercurrent isn’t dragging us down. That we’re still floating, still choosing this. But I feel the weight of everything unspoken every time you look at me like I haven’t already chosen you a hundred times in my head.

And maybe that’s what hurts the most – how much we love each other in theory, and how little in truth. You don’t ask, and I don’t tell, and we call it peace when it’s really a truce signed in fear.

So I stay quiet. And you stay close. And the air between us thickens with every word we won’t say.