The words live inside me,
soft but burning,
like a candle kept hidden
in a shuttered room.

How do I tell her I love her
when even her shadow
feels too sacred to touch?

Each time she speaks,
my heart leans forward,
aching to pour itself out,
yet I answer with silence,
afraid the truth
would break the spell
of her nearness.

So I carry it quietly—
this love that glows in my chest,
spilling into the way
I watch her,
into the stillness
that trembles when she smiles.

Perhaps she feels it—
a warmth that passes between us,
a tenderness unsaid
but alive in the air.

And if I never dare speak,
let my silence be a hymn,
a devotion she may never name—
but always somehow know.

In her sea of unrequited love I am flotsam—
not even wreckage with a story,
just something left behind,
adrift.

She is the water that carries me,
cool and untouchable,
vast and shining,
indifferent to the fragments she holds.

I do not sink—
that would be release.
I float,
caught in eddies of hope,
drawn near by a glance,
pushed away by silence.

There is no harbour,
no shore with arms outstretched.
Only the endless drift
beneath skies that never speak,
toward nothing,
from everything I once believed.

I am the forgotten,
the unchosen,
the still-loyal shard of something
she never meant to keep—
But can’t quite let go