WHAT LINGERS
CONFESSIONS
For everything your heart has been carrying, especially the words you never found the courage to say.
CONFESSIONS · 2026-10-20
My love moves toward you
before I can teach it restraint.
It asks if you are okay
even when I know
you may not be ready
to tell me the truth.
It remembers
what made you tired,
the things you said in passing,
the burdens you tried
to make sound smaller.
It leaves a light on
in my mind
for the chance
that you might return
and need someone to listen.
You may never see
how often I make room for you
inside an ordinary day.
But you are there—
in the concern I cannot switch off,
in the tenderness
that keeps reaching for you
before I even decide to.
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CONFESSIONS · 2026-10-02
I loved you in ways
I could not always hide.
I remembered the things you said
without asking myself to.
I noticed when your voice changed.
I wondered whether you got home safely,
whether you had eaten,
whether your day had been hard on you.
You occupied parts of my day
that I did not plan to give away.
And perhaps that was obvious.
Perhaps you could tell
by the way I looked for you,
by the way I stayed present
even when there was nothing important
left to say.
I did not love you halfway.
I did not know how to care for you
without letting it reach
the smallest parts of my life.
But I never wanted my love
to become something you had to carry.
I did not give it to you
so you would owe me anything.
I did not care for you
so you would choose me
out of guilt.
I only wanted you to know
that you mattered to me.
That there was someone
who saw you in ordinary moments
and still found you worth thinking about.
Maybe I gave too much of myself
to a feeling I could not name safely.
Maybe I made my heart visible
before I knew whether there was room for it
in yours.
But I cannot regret
the sincerity of what I felt.
Because every tenderness I gave you
was real.
And whatever it was to you,
to me,
it was nothing less than sincere.
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CONFESSIONS · 2026-08-15
I made something
out of the things
I could not say
without shaking.
Not to make you stay.
Not to ask you
for an answer
you were not ready to give.
I only wanted you
to know that somewhere
between your silence
and my hope,
there was a heart
trying to be honest.
Some pages were soft.
Some were painful.
All of them were real.
And even if you never
feel the same way,
I wanted my love
to exist somewhere
outside of me.
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