I knew you

from the desperate side of a counter,
where tired hands exchanged ordinary things,
yet nothing about you
was ever ordinary.

You laughed
like the day had forgotten
how heavy the world could become,
and somehow
I walked away carrying
more of you
than I ever held in my own name.

You were playful—
the kind of playful
that makes a man forget
every rehearsed sentence.
But there was something else...
a beauty so complete
it intimidated silence itself.

Most people
must wander through the maze I built,
through rooms of wit,
through locked doors of caution,
through years of carefully crafted distance
before they discover
the quiet man inside.

You...
never knocked.

One glance,
and every wall remembered
it had once been dust.

When I look at you,
I do not simply see beauty.

Beauty fades with seasons.

I see a soul
whose light seems stitched
to the same forgotten constellation
mine has searched for
since before I knew
what loneliness was.

And perhaps that is why
my imagination betrays me.

It is never grand fantasies
or impossible dreams.

It is Tuesday mornings.
Long roads with nowhere urgent to be.
Coffee growing cold
because we forgot to drink it.
Libraries.
Rain.
The kind of silence
that only two people deeply understood
can hear together.

I never dream
of owning your heart.

Only of earning
a place beside it.

Sometimes I wonder
if I could ever become bright enough
to deserve walking next to your light.

Not because yours diminishes mine,
but because yours reminds me
how much more I wish to become.

Today,
for one impossible heartbeat,
I thought I saw you
standing outside the place I now call home.

My soul recognized you
before my eyes could decide
whether hope
had dressed itself as memory.

I let the moment pass.

Some ghosts
are kinder than expectations.

Some hopes
survive only
because we refuse
to ask them their name.

Still...

There is something in your eyes
that has always unsettled me.

Not because they are beautiful—

though they are.

But because they hold
the impossible shape
of forever.

And forever
is a frightening thing
to glimpse
inside someone
who may never know
the prayers they awakened.

If my love
is meant only
to exist as quiet kindness,
then let it.

If I am destined
to wander this earth
a nomad carrying your memory
like a lantern through unfamiliar towns,
then I will not curse the road.

For loving you,
even from afar,
has made the world
appear more worth protecting.

So I ask for nothing.

No promises.

No miracles.

Only this:

May joy find you
before sorrow ever learns your address.

May peace become
the language your heart speaks most fluently.

May every burden
grow lighter
beneath the hands of tomorrow.

And if there comes a day
when our paths are written
to meet again,
I hope I arrive
not as the man
who first fell speechless before your smile—

but as the man
whose own light
has finally learned
to stand beside yours
without asking either of us
to shine less.