You don’t know how often I rehearsed distance in my mind. I told myself what to say if I saw you. I practiced not looking too long, not smiling too much, not letting my voice give anything away. I made a routine out of staying away. For months at a time, I disappeared. Not out of cruelty, but out of necessity. They always say time changes things, so I thought maybe if I gave it enough space, the pull between us would lose its grip. I thought distance could teach my heart to forget what it was never allowed to keep.

And I knew what it did to you – for me to be laughing with you one day and gone the next. I saw it in the way your voice changed when we reconnected. Like you were guarding something too. Like you understood why I left even if it hurt. You never asked for an explanation. Maybe you didn’t need one. Maybe you knew it was never about a lack of feeling, but about how much I felt. How deeply. How recklessly. How completely unprepared I was to hold that kind of want.

But the second our eyes met again, all of it – every carefully built wall, every rehearsed line, every bit of silence I had folded into my life without you – collapsed. Not loudly. Just… quietly gone. Like it was never really there to begin with. You looked at me like no time had passed. Like you still saw the same version of me you once memorized. And in that moment, I stopped pretending. Because I never really wanted distance. I just didn’t know what to do with everything that rushed in when you were near.