You were never mine. Not in the way lovers are, not in the way hands meet hands or hearts say yes out loud. You were an almost a maybe a song stuck on repeat in a language I never learned. And damn, do you know what it’s like to love someone like a secret mission? To root for their smile from the sidelines, cheering quietly while your own heart limps home from every “maybe someday”? I was a shadow in your sunshine. Loving you from a distance was the only way I knew how to keep myself from unraveling at your absence. They say unrequited love is poetic. But poetry doesn’t ache like this. It doesn’t watch someone else get what you never even had the chance to lose. Still, if I had the choice, I’d love you again. Because even in the ache, you were worth the ink. [[2025-04-05]]