Tag: free verse

I have never told a man
I loved him first.

Not because I didn’t.

Because I believed
love should recognize itself
before it had to be named.

I thought if it was true,
it would arrive on your lips
before it ever reached mine.

Then you happened.

For the first time,
I wanted to say it.

I carried those words
like water in my mouth,
afraid that if I spoke,
I would lose
both the water
and the thirst.

So I said nothing.

Instead, I loved you like the wind—

the wind that finds your face
before you have opened your eyes,

that moves through your hair
and catches in your breath,

leaving you to wonder
what your heart remembered
that your mind could not name.

It hurts to love you
because the feeling is real
and has nowhere to go.

No place in your life
where it can remain.

So I carry it into mornings,
into songs I cannot finish,
into every quiet place
that still makes room for you.

I have questioned everything else—

my judgment,
my timing,
the meaning of your silence.

But never this.

Never the love.

I only wanted one impossible thing:

for you to know
that somewhere in this world,

you were loved
by a woman who had never told a man
she loved him first—

and still could not bring herself
to tell you.

So if, on some ordinary morning,
the wind finds your face,

lingers for just a moment
and catches in your breath—

let it be enough.

Let it carry the words
I could not.