June 3, 2026

No one would know it by looking at me.

I laugh at the right moments.
I tell the stories I am supposed to tell.
I carry on with the ordinary rhythm of my days
while your name lives beneath my tongue.

Even thinking it feels dangerous.

You have become the secret room inside my heart.
You are the place I wander
when the world grows quiet
and no one is watching.

I collect small things.

The way your smile arrives
a moment before the rest of your face joins it.
The sound of your voice
when it softens without warning.
The moments you look at me
without knowing
I am memorizing them.

You probably think they vanish.
They don’t.
I carry them home with me.
I stack them carefully in the lonely places,
like candles lit against the dark.

The hardest part is pretending.

Pretending your presence
doesn’t shift the temperature of a room.
Pretending my heart doesn’t stumble
when your name appears on my screen.
Pretending I haven’t already built
a thousand impossible futures
from a handful of ordinary moments.

And maybe this is what love becomes
when it has nowhere safe to go.

No grand declarations.
or dramatic confessions.
Just quiet devotion.
A tenderness folded beneath everyday conversation.
A longing pressed neatly between responsibilities.
A hope that goes on surviving
despite knowing better.

So I keep my secret.

I smile.
I nod.
I say all the things I am supposed to say.

And meanwhile,
in the deepest, quietest corner of my heart,
a small and stubborn part of me
goes on loving you
in silence.