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WHAT LINGERS

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Poems, thoughts, confessions, and fragments of everything the heart could not keep to itself.

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CONFESSIONS · 2026-10-20

The Light I Leave On

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

Nothing Less Than Sincere

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

What I Put Into Pages

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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