u/rusty-rabbit00

When I look at you,
I understand
how a single person
can change the weather
inside another.

The room doesn't become brighter.
It simply begins
to feel more like home.

If you come close,
don't leave too soon.

Don't teach my lips
the shape of your smile,
only to leave my eyes
to carry the rain.

Stay...
until my restless heart
forgets what it was like
to wait.

Stay...
until hope
stops sounding
like a question.

And if my heart
is asking
for only one thing,
it has always been this:

Please...
let it be you.

I thought I had left
that house behind long ago.
The rooms where silence
was mistaken for guilt.

Where innocence
stood trial
without a witness.

Where tenderness learned
to lower its voice,
because laughter
could become a weapon
without warning.

Years passed.
I built new windows.

Filled them with music,
with prayer,
with mornings
that smelled of hope.

For a long time,
I believed the old walls
had forgotten my name.

Then one ordinary day,
someone spoke
of going back.

Not to the house.
Only to the people.

And somewhere beneath
the floorboards of memory,
a door I didn’t even know
still existed
creaked.

Nothing happened.
No storm.
No betrayal.

Only a quiet corner
of my heart
stood a little closer
to the exit,

just in case.
Perhaps that is
how old fear survives.

Not as thunder,
but as a bird
that never forgot
the shape of the cage,
even after
learning to fly.

So I no longer ask
the bird
why it trembles.

I simply leave
the window open
until one day,
it remembers

the sky
has been home
far longer
than the cage ever was.

She arrives like evening light on white temple walls, and before you even realize she’s there, your breathing has already softened.

When two souls
have been singing
the same note
for long enough,
even silence
begins to hum.

Perhaps
that is why
love is never divided
between the body
and the soul.

The body
is not a temptation
the soul
must overcome.

Nor is it
the destination.

It is simply
the first place
where the invisible
becomes felt.

An embrace
does not make
love sacred.

Love
makes an embrace
sacred.

Just as a raga
is never born
the moment
the musician
touches the strings.

The music
has already begun
in the silence
before the first note.

The strings
simply give it
a place
to resonate.

Perhaps
that is what
true intimacy is.

Not the meeting
of two bodies,
but the quiet moment
when touch
finally discovers
the melody
two souls
have been carrying
all along.

And in that moment,
nothing is taken.
Nothing is conquered.
Nothing is possessed.

Two hearts
simply recognize
what they have always known

that love,
at its purest,
is devotion
finding
another language.

The moment I look at you,
my breath pauses,
as though even time
needs a heartbeat longer
to take you in.

What quiet wonder
have you become,
that every part of me
finds itself
turning toward you.

My dreams,
and every quiet corner
of my thoughts,
have been steeped
in the color of you.

Now even silence
wears your shade,
and solitude
no longer arrives alone.

When I close my eyes,
I do not search
for another world.
I simply wait
for yours.

And when I fold my hands
in prayer,
my heart remembers
your name
before my lips
ever do.

Perhaps this is
what love becomes
when it is no longer
trying to be noticed.

It stops asking
to be seen,
and quietly begins
living
in everything.

So if one day
someone asks me
where I found peace,
I will not point
toward a place.

I will simply smile
because some answers
are too beautiful
for words.

There are days
when I almost tell you.

Not because my love
has grown louder,
but because keeping it quiet
has become its own kind of ache.

You would probably smile.
Perhaps take my hand.
Perhaps say nothing at all.

It is not your answer I fear.
It is the silence
that might arrive afterward.

The easy laughter
that suddenly begins
looking for itself.

The conversations
that become careful.

The comfort
that starts asking permission
before it enters.

So I choose
the gentler sorrow.

To love you
without asking
to be loved.

To remain
the familiar name
that lights up your phone,

rather than
the memory
you hesitate to revisit.

Some feelings
do not remain unspoken
because they are weak.

They remain unspoken
because they have already found
something too beautiful
to risk.

So every time
the words find my lips,
I smile instead.

Not because
there is nothing to say
but because I cannot bear
the thought of losing

the way
you already
say my name.

Come closer.
Let me gather you
into my arms.

Not to consume.
Only to become
so still
that even silence
chooses to stay.

Let me breathe you in
the way an old house
holds the scent of rain
long after the storm
has gone.

Stay
until your heartbeat
finds its place
beside mine,
not as an echo,
but as another home.

Let me know you
the way the sea
knows the moon.

Never touching.
Yet moved by it
with every tide.

Come closer
until the distance
between us
becomes too small
for loneliness
to remember our names.

These days,
I resist sleep
the way a shoreline resists the tide,
knowing surrender
will bring you back.

Because you arrive
every night.
Not through doors.
Not through dreams.

But through some hidden passage
between longing
and mercy.

One moment,
the dark is only dark.
The next,
it is carrying your fragrance.
And suddenly
the room remembers you.

I feel you beside me.
Close enough
to alter the shape of silence.

Close enough
that every restless thought
falls from me
like leaves surrendering to water.

Then you lean near.
And I know you
the way the earth knows rain
before the first drop falls.

The way a compass knows north
without ever seeing it.
That is why
I never open my eyes.

Not because I doubt you are there.
But because dawn
is a thief.
And I have watched it
steal you too many times.

So I remain
in that fragile country
between sleeping and waking,
where you still belong
to the same world as me.

And when morning finally arrives,
you disappear
like the last star
withdrawing its light from the sky.

Leaving behind
only your absence,
glowing softly
where you used to be.

When I opened the window,
morning was full of rain.

Cool air brushed past me,
but it was your absence
that made everything shiver.

I stood there,
watching the world blur,
while inside me
everything narrowed
into one quiet ache.

Tea between my hands.
Soft music, barely there.
And you,
not here,
yet everywhere
my heart kept turning.

The rain was no longer outside.
It slipped into my breath,
settled beneath my skin,
and lingered there
like a longing
with nowhere to go.

On mornings like this,
I do not want peace.
I want you

close enough
for the ache to loosen,

close enough
for warmth to become
the only thing I know.

Because longing,
left alone too long,
does not fade.

It deepens
until even the rain
feels like a touch
that missed its way to you.

You are the air my soul has chosen to live inside.

You never leave.
That is the trouble.

You linger
like rain trapped
in the scent of old wood,

like moonlight
caught in the folds
of a curtain long after dawn.

I find you
in half-finished songs,
in quiet roads,
in the pause
between one thought
and the next.

Never enough
to belong to the present.
Never far enough
to become the past.

If absence were complete,
I could have mourned it.
Built a small shrine
to what was lost
and walked away.

But you return
in fragments.
A glance.
A memory.
A feeling

with nowhere to go.
And every piece of you
arrives carrying
the weight of the whole.

I used to think
that was my tragedy.
Now I know better.

Some loves
are not meant to stay.
They are meant
to change the shape
of the soul.

You were one of them.
And that
is enough.

Still You…
The years have changed their clothes
a thousand times.
Cities have risen and faded.
Seasons have carried entire versions of me
downriver.

And yet,
when the heart wanders
to the edge of itself,
it finds your name there,
waiting.

Not like a fire.
Fires burn out.
Not like a storm.
Storms move on.

More like starlight
from a distant constellation,
already ancient,
yet somehow
still arriving.

Only you…
The moon has borrowed
a thousand reflections.
The sea has rehearsed
a thousand shores.

But every tide,
without instruction,
returns.

There is a kind of knowing
deeper than memory.
A compass buried beneath bone.
A song hidden inside silence.
The place every lost thing
tries to reach.

Always you…
Not because the world
holds no other beauty.
But because among all its wonders,
you became
the horizon
my soul learned by heart.

I want you,
not in the way a storm
wants the sea,

but in the way evening
lingers at a window,
reluctant to leave.

I want the version of you
that appears
when the day is done,

when there is nothing left
to prove,
and no one left
to impress.

The softening of your eyes.
The gentle fall
of your shoulders.

The quiet exhale
that says
you have finally arrived.

A little closer, tonight.
Close enough
to hear the silence between us,

close enough
to feel the warmth
of your presence,

without needing
to fill the space with words.
I don’t need every secret.
I don’t need every wound.

Just that brief,
beautiful moment
when you forget
to hold yourself together,

and become
exactly who you are.

A little closer, tonight.
Long enough
for the heart to remember
what home feels like.

I seek the secret corner of your heart
Not the part
the world gets to touch,

but the quiet place
you keep hidden,
even from yourself.

The way your breath changes
when you come close,
as though a door within you
has begun to open.

The brief hesitation,
the soft surrender,
when the masks grow tired
and something truer
steps forward.

I don’t want all of you.
Only that one moment
when you stop holding back

and let me witness
what you never show.

You come closer
without announcement,
like evening light
crossing a quiet room.

Your chest finds mine,
and suddenly my heartbeat
is no longer a sound

but a place
where you are resting.

My arm gathers you in,
slow and certain,
like a tide
choosing one shore
and refusing to leave it.

Your fingers hold my shirt
just tight enough
to say what words cannot.

There is no rush here.
Only that quiet warmth
where your body settles into mine

and both our hearts learn
a gentler language.
If love ever needed proof,
it would look like this:

two souls,
heart to heart,

discovering that tenderness
was home all along.

Look at you,
melting for me like that.
No armor.
No distance.

Just a soft yes
moving quietly through your veins.

Come here.
Let me be the floor
your heart collapses onto,

the chest you lean into
when your strength decides
to turn liquid.

If you melt,
I’ll hold.

If you tremble,
I’ll breathe slower

until your pulse remembers
it has a home.

Tonight,
let it be simple.
Your softness.
My arms.
And the quiet promise between us
that says,

you don’t have to hold yourself together
when you’re with me.

To touch her lips
would not have been difficult.

They rested there
like rose petals at dusk,
holding the last blush
of a departing sun.

But before a touch,
I wanted to linger
in the perfume of her breath,
to lose myself
in that invisible garden
where every silence bloomed.
And losing oneself
takes time.

To hold her hand
would not have been difficult.

But between her fingers
lived a fragile kingdom
built of trust,
and quiet promises
never spoken aloud.

I wished to learn its pathways
before I called it home.
And journeys like that
take time.

To look into her eyes
would not have been difficult.

But behind them
rested an ocean,
still on the surface,
endless underneath.

It was never about the body.
The body is only the doorway.
I wanted the room beyond,

where her fears slept,
where her laughter was born,
where her soul
set down its armor
and sat beside the fire.

For distances measured
in tenderness,
not desire,
and in surrender,
not possession,
always take time.

You have no idea what it does to my heart.

Do you remember
that quiet covenant
we carried between us,

like a flame sheltered
from the wind,
like a secret harbor
known only to two wandering souls.

Do you remember
the playful complaints
we invented just to keep talking,

the harmless little mischiefs
that stretched ordinary evenings
into something worth remembering.

Do you remember
how words rarely reached our lips,
because somehow
we always knew
what the other was about to say.

I still find those moments
waiting for me
in quiet corners of memory.
Whether they still visit you,
I do not know.

Whether you remember them,
I may never know.
But I do.

I remember all of it.

Do not make an enemy
of the parts of you
that are hurting.

Sit beside them.
Take their hand.
Listen.

Not every shadow
is a monster.

Some are abandoned rooms
inside the heart,
waiting for someone
to turn on the light.

The wounded places within you
are not angry
because they hate you.

They are angry
because they have spent years
knocking on a door
only you could open.

So tell them:
“You belong to me.
You always did.”

Let the war end there.
Lay down the armor.
For some wounds
do not heal through battle.

They soften
beneath the warmth
of a hand that stays,

and a love
that no longer asks
which parts are
worthy of being held.