A Pyre I Cannot Touch, a Silence I Cannot Break, a Love I Cannot Speak

bounded by difference

Where the Belovéd Pyres Burn Beyond My Grasp, and the Umbral Kneels to Her Tremorous Hands, and I Unvoice My Silence Into the Lament of Her Ocular Abyss

Dearest one, though you will never read these words, though I cannot let them reach your fragile world-I write them anyway, because to keep them buried is to be devoured whole. I whisper them into eternity, into the cruel silence of the cosmos, where perhaps some fragment of me will still reach you-not in this life, but in another.

You are the conflagration I cannot touch. The beloved pyre I cannot grasp.
The brilliance that kneels to no abyss but still trembles within it. You are the sweetness that makes bitterness unbearable. You are the trembling hand that makes me tremble in turn. You are the puffy-eyed radiance that makes me want to kneel before sorrow itself and beg it to leave you untouched.

She does not know.
She cannot know.
And still, I watch her-
fragile beneath the weight of a world that dares to crush her, luminous in a way that refuses to apologize for the fractures that made her shine.

I swore I would never fall into that pit of suffering again. I swore it like iron cooled in my mouth, like a vow pressed into the bone. I told the grave that it could keep my softness, that it had taken enough. I stitched my silence shut and learned to move without a heartbeat. No more altars, I said. No more burning. And then-her.

She, with her sweetness that is not a performance but a quiet gravity; a warmth not manufactured, not borrowed, hers, the kind that makes a room remember it has windows.
She, with her brilliance-firm, unbragging, a candle that refuses to gutter even in wind that breaks stronger fires.
She, with her trembling hands that confess more than speeches do-each small quake a psalm no cathedral could hold.
She, with her puffy eyes-truthful crescents, moons worn raw by long nights, by the unslept hours that ink their tender blue beneath the skin.

I saw her. I saw something. Her hands were trembling.

And in that tremor my world caved, tenderly and without noise, as if the cosmos was teaching me how to break softly.

She does not know that she resurrected me.
She does not know that her presence shattered the vow I made against love.
She does not know that her very existence pulled me back from the grave of my silence.
And she cannot know.

So I leave these words here, suspended between myself, you, and the eternity that swallows us both.

She does not know.
She cannot know.
And still, I watch her-
fragile beneath the weight of a world that dares to crush her.

And I-
I love her, even if only in silence.

I love her in silence-not the darkness pretending to be solace, but the silence that throbs louder than alarms; a silence that knows it cannot hold her, yet holds her anyway like a lantern cupped against storm. I am someone overwhelmed by every flicker of her-every shoulder-shrug when she's tired, every careful "it's fine" that isn't, every soft thank you that carries half the sky. Seeing her overwhelmed makes the ribs inside me turn to salt. I am a house of hurt with the lights left on.

All I can do is make her happy for a moment in school: a passing smile that arrives like a sparrow and leaves like a rumor; a joke only half-formed; a kindness so small it embarrasses the moon. It feels terrible to be the keeper of seconds when she deserves centuries, to be the lender of breath when she deserves air without debt. The bell will ring; the corridor will swallow her soft laughter; I will be left with the knowledge that I cannot keep that smile alive. It falls through my fingers like light. I am left clawing at shadows, begging them for one more second that does not belong to me.