for the moment we dare not name

We met in the evening, a café tucked away in the back streets, where steam curls and the world disappears.

Your smile, half-spoken, reaches across the table like a bridge I might risk walking. Fingers tap rhythms on ceramic cups, measuring time in heartbeats, not minutes.

I speak, then laugh, too quickly, maybe, and you catch it, not correcting, just knowing. We orbit casual topics, but the gravity between glances pulls deeper.

Outside, the pavement cools. Inside, our words grow warmer, a thread unwinding from comfort to curiosity and to the edge of tender, maybe.

I wonder if you hear it too, the silence that isn’t empty, but filled with the question neither of us dares to ask.

But your hand, brushing mine as we reach for the bill, answers it gently.

Tonight, we are possibility, wrapped in the scent of coffee and the hush of recognition. Not love, not yet, but something leaning toward it, like a flame finding air.