We like each other far more than we ever allow ourselves to admit. We pretend it’s lighter than it is, safer than it feels, but when we’re at odds the tension tells the truth for us. It’s sharper, heavier, because it isn’t indifference we’re fighting against. It’s attachment. It’s wanting.

There are moments when I feel, without logic or explanation, that I belong to you. And just as strongly, that you belong to me. Not in a possessive way, not in something I need to cage

or claim, but in the quiet, undeniable way two people recognize home in each other. As if my body remembers something my mind refuses to admit.

When I’m with you, I’m most myself. Not the version I perform for the world, not the one shaped by obligation or restraint, but the truest one. The unguarded one. And the tragedy is that I rarely get to be him, because we never get to be us. We orbit something real without ever stepping fully into it, and that distance costs me more than I let on.

I think about what it would take, the courage