I can feel the danger when you are near, not in you, but in the way my chest tightens, in the way my thoughts drift where they shouldn’t.
Too fast. Too willing. Toward something I am not allowed to name, so I don’t.
Yet I feel it crawling beneath my skin, waking every nerve that shouldn’t stir.
I hold it back.
I soften my voice, keep my words light, careful. Safe. And still, I notice how your presence shifts the air around me, how it lingers in ways I want to trace but cannot.
Because time is fragile, or at least that’s how you make it sound. Something delicate, that shouldn’t be pressed too hard, too soon. Yet I ache quietly, imagining what it might feel like if I let it.
And I listen.
Even as everything in me leans forward, even as my feelings gather and insist on being noticed, a coil of heat and recklessness pulsing quietly beneath the calm.
There’s a sharp ache in holding still, in smiling quietly while swallowing the words that want to escape, in imagining how close I could be, how close you might let me come.
I keep pace with you, outwardly calm, measured.
But beneath it, something reckless twists and pulses, dangerous and impatient, ready to unravel if only you leaned closer.
And I ache to see if you would feel it too.