You are the warmth in the serenity I never drank,
the final page of a novel I hold off reading
just to stretch the story one more night.
You are the lullaby I hummed when I forgot the lyrics
but remember the ache.

I think I’ve been writing to you in everything—
in the way I halt at fullstops
Because I'm afraid
there's always an end from a beginning
I do not know the color of your eyes,
but I know how they’ll light up when you speak of things you love.
I haven’t felt your hand in mine,
but I know how I’ll memorize the curve of your thumb
like it’s punctuation—
a comma in the sentence of my life
that says: pause here. something beautiful is coming.

If you’re wondering,
yes—
I’ve saved you all the best lines.
The ones that never made it into poems
because they were too soft, too sacred, too soon.
They live folded in my chest
like notes passed under desks in classrooms of longing.
I don’t send them,
because I want to give them to you in person—
when we are older,
and ready,
and brave enough to admit we were always meant to find each other
in a world full of almosts.

And when you arrive—
with your quiet eyes and your laugh that tastes like home,
don’t be surprised if I cry.
Not because I am sad,
but because it is a kind of grief
to wait so long for a face you already loved
in every stranger that almost looked like you.

To you, whom I haven’t met yet—
come slowly,
but come.
This heart has been keeping time in poetry,
and every line
has always led me to you.


Erennwrites