Still

There are cities made entirely of longing.

Built on the foundations of could-have-beens. Skylines shaped by every hand that almost touched another. Streets paved with unfinished sentences. Rooms filled with warmth that never quite became a fire.

I lived in one of them.

I walked its avenues with the others, the runners who weren’t allowed to win, the lovers who slept back to back, the artists who could see the colors but never find the form. We moved in silence mostly, or with laughter that tried to bury the ache. No one looked directly at anyone else, because the looking made it real.

We knew what we wanted. We could feel it. Taste it.

And that was the curse.

To feel it all, vividly, intimately, but never touch. To circle the thing you love with your hands open and your mouth shut. To build the room, lay out the cushions, feel the sunlight warming the walls… but never be invited in.

We memorized the menu. We knew every line. And we stayed hungry.

She was there, of course. The one I wanted. The one who wanted me.

We didn’t say it out loud. Not because we were shy. But because there was no way to say it that wouldn’t break something else.

It wasn’t shame. It wasn’t fear. It was just the truth: Some things live brighter in the space between. And some loves don’t survive the fall into form.

I watched her mouth form questions she never asked. I saw her reach for me in dreams and pull away before waking. I stood close enough to feel her breath shift when I entered a room, and still, we never touched.

We wanted everyone. To be seen. To be chosen. To be right. We wanted to stand at the summit, arms open to the wind. But when we reached for each other, the rules bent. They always did.

There was no villain. No betrayal. No sharp cut to blame.

Only a soft erosion the slow drip of timing against certainty, the quiet disassembly of something that almost became everything.

Love doesn’t break. It dissolves.

Not with a scream, but with quiet. Not with fire, but with distance.

We never said goodbye. We just stopped showing up in each other’s daydreams.

And still I remember her shape in the morning light. I remember the way her mouth moved. I remember thinking: this could be it. And knowing: it won’t be.

No one was to blame.

Not her. Not me. Not the rules, the gods, the winds.

Only the space between us.

And that was always just a little too wide.