I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t go looking for it. But feelings don’t wait for permission, and they don’t follow rules.

You were supposed to be safe. Not in the emotional way – safe in the untouchable, off-limits, no-need-to-worry kind of way. But something shifted, quietly, until I couldn’t unfeel it.

I started noticing the way your voice softened in late-night conversations. How your laugh stayed with me longer than it should have. I held back every word that wanted to give me away.

There were moments I thought maybe you felt it too. But the timing was always wrong, the circumstances too tangled. So I kept pretending I didn’t feel a thing, even as it swelled inside me.

Now I sit with it quietly. Not because I’m ashamed of how I feel, but because I’ve learned how dangerous it can be to feel out loud when it isn’t safe. And you were never the one I could risk naming it with.

But here we are. You, unaware or pretending. Me, pretending harder. And all that feeling, tucked behind a silence I never wanted to need.