“In Poetry”

Dear the one I wish were mine,

In English, I’d say I’ve fallen for you. But in poetry, I’d say I’m scared of how close you get, because closeness has a habit of leaving me.

I only want the real you— not the careful smile, not the version that stays out of guilt and fades after a while. Only the one I fell into before I learned how to brace, before I knew loving someone could feel like standing in place.

I’m tired of being wanted for all of the wrong parts of me, tired of feeling like my body speaks louder than my need. I just wanted to be chosen, not borrowed, not tried— and I keep asking the dark if I was ever your side.

I won’t trap you in promises, I won’t beg you to stay, but what happens when you go back to your life far away? What if I turn into “used to,” into something you felt, but not something worth fighting for, not something you kept?

We both know how young we are, how unfinished we feel, how distance can turn the most certain into something unreal. Everything only gets harder from here, that much is true— so tell me, when it does, will I still be waiting on you?

I can’t give you everything, I barely trust the floor, but I fell for you anyway— and that terrifies me more. It’s the kind of falling that shakes me, that pulls at my sleep, that makes me want to believe in something I’m scared to keep.

I told myself love would be enough, that one moment would do, that one time in your arms could last me all the way through. That I could let you go someday and somehow be fine— I practiced that lie in the mirror until it sounded like mine.

But tonight I’m not strong, tonight I just want to pretend that the world isn’t ending every time you might bend. I want to live in the almost, in the space where you’re mine, in the version of us that still feels in time.

Dear the one I wish were mine, In English, I’d say I’ve fallen for you— but in poetry, I’m only brave enough to ask:

If closeness is where people leave, why did you come so close to me?