What Is Love, If Not Withheld?

What is love

when it hides behind trembling lips,

too afraid to fall,

too brittle to bloom?

Why is it so hard to show—

this quiet ache in the chest,

this unsent letter of the soul,

folded a thousand times in silence?

Is it wrong to open the cage,

to spill the trembling truth

into someone’s hands…

and risk being met with nothing?

Life… you’re not a mirror.

You don’t reflect what we pour.

You swallow.

You scatter.

You pretend not to notice

the way we ache in corners.

I try to speak,

but the words trip over grief.

They come out crooked,

like my shadow

on a cold, uneven wall.

Love feels like a room

that once knew laughter,

and now holds only echoes.

Solitude—

a crown of dust

on an invisible throne.

I wear it too well.

Why is it that

the more we need warmth,

the more the world grows frost?

This isn’t even poetry,

just a heartbeat

that never found its echo.

And still…

somewhere between breath and break,

I hold it—

this strange, stubborn thing.

Call it hope.

Call it pathetic.

It’s the only thing I know.