u/Born_Construction_60

I'm going to sit too close. Touch your leg under the table like I have every right to. Lean in when I don't need to, just to try and make you forget what you were saying. I'll keep finding reasons to put my hands on you, and none of them will be honest.

I'm going to kiss you properly. Slow enough to be cruel. Long enough that when I pull away, you'll still feel it there, unfinished.

I'll keep you up too late, talking nonsense, stealing more kisses, dragging the night out because neither of us wants to be the one who lets it end.

I'm going to make you shake, and then I'm going to hold you quiet and close, while the room settles back around us.

I'll steal your side of the bed.
Probably your sleep.
Definitely your peace.

And I'll want you in the morning too, before bad coffee, before daylight makes us sensible again, with your hands on me and that quiet smile people wear when the night was exactly what they needed.

And when I leave, there will be no part of you left guessing. We were friends first. There's too much love here for any of this to ruin anything.

The roots went down so long ago
I can't tell mine from yours anymore
Can't see where your need ends
Or what I'd be without the floor.

I know my silence by its weight
I have worn its shape against my skin
I have learned to live in a locked room
Knowing exactly how the dark comes in.

I was easiest to love
When I asked for almost nothing
When my hands were full of offering
And my mouth was full of mercy.

Then he said my name
Like it was something he'd been keeping
And I felt it land
Like the first time, like being seen.

The roots went down so long ago
I can't tell mine from yours anymore
Can't see where your need ends
Or what I'd be without the floor.

It isn't loneliness I fear
It is the small and brutal hope
I put my hand against the door
What if cold is all that waits
What if there is no more.

What if I cross that open ground
Step inside and find
Bare walls, only good light
Nothing soft left behind.

Would I escape the worn, the certain
Trade all that's known, all that's solid
For a beautiful, empty night.

The roots went down so long ago
I can't tell mine from yours anymore
Can't see where your need ends
Or what I'd be without the floor.

You were told desire was an imposition.

That wanting someone, really wanting them, the kind that wakes you at 3am just to press your mouth to their shoulder, was somehow embarrassing.

Excessive.
A burden that you alone would have to manage.

You believed them. Of course you did. They said it so calmly, so reasonably, that you mistook their coldness for sanity.

And then you found me. And I found you.

I want to run my finger along every frown line that her dismissal has carved into your face, until your jaw forgets how to clench.

I want to send you the photo of my eggs benedict at noon because it looks like tits and I'm not even slightly sorry.

I want to wake you with my mouth. I want to send you to work wrecked and counting.

I want you to walk through your whole ordinary day knowing that I am at the other end of it. Wanting you, not politely, not occasionally, not just when it's convenient but at least three times a week and more when you do that thing where you hold my gaze just a little too long.

You were starved and then told you shouldn't be hungry. You were too much for someone who was never enough.

I am not managing you. I am matching you. And you are exactly what I fucking deserve.

You were told desire was an imposition.

That wanting someone, really wanting them, the kind that wakes you at 3am just to press your mouth to their shoulder, was somehow embarrassing.

Excessive.
A burden that you alone would have to manage.

You believed them. Of course you did. They said it so calmly, so reasonably, that you mistook their coldness for sanity.

And then you found me. And I found you.

I want to run my finger along every frown line that her dismissal has carved into your face, until your jaw forgets how to clench.

I want to send you the photo of my eggs benedict at noon because they look like tits and I'm not even slightly sorry.

I want to wake you with my mouth. I want to send you to work wrecked and counting.

I want you to walk through your whole ordinary day knowing that I am at the other end of it, wanting you, not politely, not occasionally, not just when it's convenient. At least three times a week and more when you do that thing where you hold my gaze too long.

And when you are deep inside me, I want to pull you closer until your mouth is on mine and kiss you like I am tasting exactly how much I want you. Because even when there is no closer left to get, I want to close the gap even more.

You were starved and then told you mustn't be hungry. You were too much for someone who was never enough.

I am not managing you. I am matching you. And you are exactly what I fucking deserve.

It's only daytime.

No midnight. No candlelight. No beautiful darkness made for secrets.

Just sunlight through hotel curtains, a day-use room, a few stolen hours that feel bigger than they should.

A check-in time. A check-out time. A bed that belongs to no one.

And still, it feels enormous.

Because after a long time wanting you, after building a imaginary world around almost, around maybe, around daydreams...

I finally get a door. A room. A moment where wanting becomes knowing.

You know that feeling two days before Christmas? When joy is so close it changes the air. Everything glows.

Even waiting feels beautiful.

That's what this is.

It's May. I am not waiting for Santa.

I am waiting for you.

For the door to close. For your hands. For the moment I stop surviving on imagination and finally have something real.

Just hours.

Enough to ruin every ordinary afternoon after.

And I swear to God, it feels holier than Christmas ever did.

I've been thinking about something I can't shake. It's not heavy, just something I've noticed, and felt, and turned over quietly.

I don't belong in your world. Not the one that existed before me. I don't know your nicknames. I don't know the shorthand woven into your daily routines. I don't know the friends who've known you so long they don't even have to finish their sentences around you. I don't know what it sounds like to hear your beautiful children call for you.

When I catch glimpses of that world, and I do, in small ways, I feel like I'm pressing my face to the glass. Watching something warm, familiar, and deeply rooted that I have no map for. Something that was already fully formed before I arrived.

And the truth is, I don't want to cross that line. I'm not even sure I'd know how. That world has its own gravity and I'm not part of its orbit.

It isn’t that I don’t want your world. It’s that what matters to me most isn’t whether I stand inside it, but whether what exists between us is real.

But I've been sitting with something else too. The version of you I get, I don't think that version exists anywhere in that world. I think it's specifically me-shaped. Built quietly in the space between us, over years, before either of us ever named it.

There’s something about being known by you that feels less like being understood, and more like being recognised.

And what I've realised is that we're not trying to fit into each other's worlds at all. We're making a completely new one. Small, still unfolding, and entirely our own.

I don’t need to know your nicknames. I don’t want to take you away from your world. I only want to keep being the place where that version of you exists.

I’m writing so much this week. I have no one I can talk to about you, and if I don’t get the thoughts out of my head, cohere them, pin them down somewhere, I feel like I may go crazy. As Adrianne Lenker sings, “my brain is like an orchestra playing on, insane.”

I started thinking about you and realised that so much of what I love about you is tied up in how you make me feel about myself. I know that’s probably normal, but somehow it feels like a disservice, too. As though reducing you to the mirror of my own feelings misses the point of who you actually are.

When you’re being cheeky, I see the little boy you must have been. That’s the thing nobody would expect. This man who carries so much, who holds himself so steadily through circumstances that would flatten most people, and then something catches him and his whole face changes and there he is. Right there. Unguarded and lit up and completely irresistible.

You are soft and warm and funny. Genuinely funny, not performing it. Thoughtful in a way that feels considered rather than calculated. You listen to people like you mean it. You learn because the world still interests you, and the fact that your mind moves the way it does, curious and alive and always reaching for the next thing, does something to me I wasn’t prepared for.

You are sexy in a way that crept up on me and then stayed. Just present. Under the skin and remaining there, permanent, like it always belonged. My body noticed you long before I let my mind admit it. The goosebumps I used to get standing close to you were no joke. There are moments with you now, where I become acutely aware of having a body, of space, of closeness, of the fact that wanting you is its own complete and beautiful language.

You are guarded, yes, but you know it, and that self-awareness is its own kind of courage. You crack open just enough to let me see something in there I could never walk away from. Something you don’t show easily. Something I feel trusted to hold.

You are protective without ever being patronising. I noticed. When I said I could do it, you just held the space and let me. Gently moving the world an inch to the left so I had room to trust myself. I got the wine bottle open and you said nothing, and yet, that was everything.

You are for me.

I pray that I am for you.

Thank you for wanting me.

Not the made-bed version. Not the one who does the driving, makes all the plans, and still holds the map. But the one who spills over. The one who chases a thought before it’s finished. The one who wants too much and cannot stop herself from saying so.

I learned early that love was something you earned. Stay useful, stay. So I stayed. Twenty-five years of being kept, and of keeping.

And I want to be clear: there was nothing wrong with it. Nothing I could point to, nothing that broke. I was truly loved. I was cared for. I was kept so well.

I just wasn’t really wanted. Only as an inconvenience, thankfully worth being inconvenienced for.

I didn’t even know that was what was missing. Not really. Not until you showed me differently.

You wanted the frequency of me. The signal AND the messy static. You said shine, and you didn’t mean "not quite so bright as that."

I still catch myself waiting for the correction. For the kind, careful taking back. Because I know how gently you would do it.

That’s the thing that keeps me awake.

Don’t.

Please, please want me inconvenient. Want me as I am, without the apology I’ve carried for so long, I forgot I was carrying it at all.

Let us finally show each other how it feels to be truly wanted.

You did get the best out of me. I wanted to please you. I wanted you to be proud of me. Even then I was yours to look after.

I would have done anything you asked. I would have occasionally fought you but I would have done it anyway. Because never once did I doubt that you had my back. And my front, and every angle. Like a hand shielding me from the noise.

And that is maybe why just lying with my head on your chest now, arm wrapped over you, feels so much like home. It's a different kind of home to the one I'm used to.

Admittedly it feels less safe, more unknown. But there's a quality to it where I can fully, finally, and unreservedly surrender in a way I never have before. Close my eyes and just rest. I know you will keep the noise away, for a while, at least. And I know what that finite may mean. But right now, I am not ready to visit my reality.

I fear that when we are finally alone, truly alone, I will find my way to your skin, start kissing and never stop. I will try to climb inside you and whisper that I am yours.

You will get the best out of me, once again.

I've been thinking about orbits.

How two people can exist in the same universe, moving through the same air, maybe even the same rooms, and still miss each other by a precise, devastating margin. Twenty-five years.

That's not bad timing. That's the universe being *exact* about its cruelty.

Where were you then? Where was I? Somewhere becoming who we had to become for people who weren't us. Somewhere learning lessons that were necessary, and wrong, and ours. Our paths weren't crossed, they were parallel. Close enough to feel the gravity. Too far apart to fall into.

And now here we are.

I've taken photos I'll never send. Arranged the light just so. Shed everything, slowly, the way I'd want you to watch. Looked at myself the way I hope your eyes might. Then closed the app. Because wanting to be unwrapped and being brave enough to say "here I am, all of me, take your time" are two different kinds of courage, and I only have one of them on any given day.

I've written this letter seventeen times. In my head. In the shower, where my thoughts about you are unrepeatable. At 2am, with my hand pressed flat against my sternum needing to slow my eager heart.

This isn't just want, though God, there's that too, low and persistent and very specific to you. It's something stranger and more particular. It's that I know you will *know* me. Not the version I perform for rooms. Not the role I fill in other people's stories. *Me.* The whole thing, undone. And I'd know you back, and we'd both be wrecked by it.

I am matched.

Twenty-five years ago we didn't exist to each other. Now I exist to you in photographs I shouldn't have taken, in thoughts I can't unknow, in whatever is about to happen when we're finally in a room where no one can find us.

The world didn't give us innocent. It gave us *this.* Complicated, borrowed, our mouths full of secrets, and still, so bloody worth it.

I am not invisible here. And neither are you. And that alone is the most extraordinary thing that has happened to me in a very long time.

Twenty-five years too late. Still absolutely, totally, finally, yours.