stay.
You didn’t arrive like an ending.
You arrived like a piece already there.
Walking backwards,
with a smug grin on your annoying face
like you’re just waiting for me.
Not to catch up
but to enjoy the journey.
You arrived like a choice
I kept making
even when I didn’t understand why.
You didn’t take up space in me,
you taught me how to stand inside it.
How to stay,
when staying didn’t feel like surrender.
How to let a future exist
without assuming it would collapse under its own weight.
And I think that’s what I didn’t know before
that love isn’t supposed to carry you.
It’s supposed to meet you
where you are already moving.
Not rescue.
Not anchor.
Just… walk beside you.
Now I notice things I used to miss.
Not because I’m afraid of losing them anymore
but because I know I won’t.
Your laugh across a crowded room.
The way your hand finds mine without looking.
The way home doesn’t feel like escape anymore,
