The Quiet of Loving You

I hold you softly,
not in my arms,
but in the hollow spaces between words.
In the silence of a breath
just before it falls into sound,
you are there,
untouched by my trembling need to say your name.

I trace your shadow
in the stillness of a crowded room,
a thousand unspoken syllables
pressed between my teeth.
My gaze lingers where it shouldn’t,
but never long enough for you to notice.

It is not sadness, this silence,
but a garden of secrets,
where every petal blooms in quiet reverence.
I water it with patience,
sun it with longing,
but never dare to pluck the flowers.

Because loving you
without your knowing
feels like a kind of worship—
a prayer meant for no one to hear.
And so I hold it,
this wordless offering,
fragile and infinite
in the cradle of my chest.