u/AwarenessOk4544

She isn’t
the love of my life.
You are.
But loving you
wouldn’t feel
the way it does
if I hadn’t
loved her first.

I’m sitting across from someone kind, someone interesting.

She’s laughing at my story. I’m smiling back.

It looks like a date.

It sounds like a date.

I genuinely like her, I think.

But I’m not really here.

I know how to ask good questions.

How to hold eye contact.

How to be curious.

It looks like connection.

It isn’t.

Someone already got the real me.

And it didn’t end in fireworks.

It ended in silence.

Now?

Guard rails. Scripts. Safe exits.

I want to let someone in.

But I can’t seem to unclench.

Not yet.

So I nod. I laugh. I tell a good story.

And I leave knowing I never actually showed up.