Almost, Always

I want to talk to you, you want to talk to me, but we won’t.
I want to look at you, you want to look at me, but we won’t.
That don’t-care attitude we throw on like a mask the moment we catch each other’s glance it’s all fake. It’s all trembling hands hidden inside steady pockets, racing hearts masked by indifferent eyes.

We move in the same spaces like strangers wearing familiar souls. I feel your presence like a whisper brushing the edge of my skin. I know you feel mine too. It’s there, in the slight tension in your jaw, the way your fingers fidget when you pretend not to see me.

The silence between us is heavy. It isn’t empty it’s full of all the words we’ll never say, all the confessions we’re too proud, too scared, or too stubborn to give voice to.
We pass each other like ships lost in thick fog, signaling in ways too subtle to break through.

Sometimes, our eyes betray us. They lift, they search, they almost meet.
Almost.
But pride steps in no, maybe it’s fear and we both glance away like it never mattered, like we’re too busy, too distracted, too careless to even notice the other.

But we do notice. Every time. Every goddamn time.

When you laugh a little too loudly just to prove you’re having fun, I hear it. When I crack a joke a little too sharp, a little too obvious, I know you’re listening. We orbit each other with this strange gravity neither of us dares to acknowledge.
It’s exhausting.
It’s addicting.
It’s heartbreaking.

I wonder what would happen if one of us just gave in just turned, just smiled, just said, “Hi.”
Would the world tilt? Would time stop? Or would it be so simple, so painfully easy, that we’d laugh at ourselves for waiting so long?

But no.
We stay frozen behind our walls, pretending that the air isn’t charged between us, pretending that the thought of you isn’t carved into my mind like a song I can’t unhear.

It’s easier this way, isn’t it?
No risks. No rejections.
Just the safe ache of what-ifs and almosts.

I hate it.
I crave it.
I don’t even know anymore.

All I know is that when you’re near, my heart knows. My body knows.
And I think yours does too, no matter how hard you try to hide it behind blank stares and forced laughs.

We’re artists of avoidance, poets of pretense.
Painting distance with every glance, weaving silence with every step.
And maybe that’s all we’ll ever be two people who could have been something, but chose instead to wear their armor of indifference a little too tightly, a little too long.

Still…
In the quiet moments when no one’s watching, I dare to hope.
Maybe one day, our courage will be louder than our fear.
Maybe one day, I’ll meet your eyes and neither of us will look away.
Maybe one day, we’ll talk.
Maybe.

But not today.