Sometimes I catch myself staring at your hands, your mouth, the way you breathe when you’re thinking. It’s stupid, how much I notice. I memorize you without permission, like I’m preparing for a goodbye I never agreed to.

I tell myself not to read into it. Not the way you linger, not the pauses, not how you look at me when you think I won’t notice. But I do. I notice everything. And it’s killing me not to ask if you do too.

I don’t think you realize how much I hold back. How many times I almost say something and don’t. I laugh instead. I change the subject. I do anything but tell you the truth, which is that you wreck me without even trying.

There’s a version of this where I say screw it and tell you everything. I tell you I want you. I tell you I’m tired of pretending. But then what? What if I lose even the small pieces of you I get to keep?

You’re right there. Close enough to touch. But something always pulls us back. It’s timing, fear, the comfort of pretending. I don’t even know anymore. I just know I’m tired of pretending we’re not standing on the edge of something real.

No one sees it. No one sees the way I tense up when you walk into a room. How I soften when you talk to me. How I get quiet because I feel too much. This isn’t friendship. It never was. But I’d rather ache than lose you.

I keep hoping the feelings will fade if I ignore them long enough. But they don’t. They grow in the silence, in the stolen glances, in the spaces where your presence hangs heavy and I pretend I don’t feel it.

I’ve built walls around every part of me, and you still found a way in. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. I just know I’m not the same anymore. And I don’t know how to un-feel you.