I handed you my heart
like a glass still warm from holding tea —
not boiling, not begging,
just honest.

You took it gently,
like someone afraid to leave fingerprints
on something that wasn’t theirs.

You said you weren’t ready.
That love, right now,
would feel like a detour
when you’re still drawing the map.

And I said okay.
But inside,
my ribs felt like a concert hall
that just missed the music
by seconds.

I didn’t fall for you loudly.
I fell in the quiet ways —
in the way your name sat in my throat
like a word I wasn’t supposed to speak.
In the way your friends laughed too knowingly,
like the universe told them
before I did.

You sat across from me
like gravity disguised as coincidence.
Like your silence
was louder than anything you could have said.

And maybe you did like me —
in that hesitant, half-drawn kind of way.
Maybe you were raised to believe
that feelings are distractions,
that love should wait
until every dream is neatly folded.

But I wasn’t trying to unravel you.
I just wanted to be something
you didn’t have to ignore.

I didn’t ask for a forever.
Just a flicker of yes.
A pause.
An ache mirrored back.

Instead, you offered me friendship
with hands that trembled
like they’d almost said more.

So now, I carry this moment
like a letter unsent —
creased, rewritten,
but still tucked away.

Not now, you said.
And maybe that’s the truth.

But somewhere,
beneath your temple-quiet discipline
and unspoken maybes,
I think you felt it too —

a softness too early,
a closeness too close.

Maybe not now.
Maybe not ever.

But if it ever becomes now,
I hope you remember —
I offered my heart
when it was still learning
how to be brave.