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[wondersmithswondelrand]

This Will Take Time

My whole life smells like you.

Not in the obvious ways.

Not in scarves forgotten on chairs, or on the sleeves of old sweaters hidden at the back of a closet, or in the fading traces left behind on sheets that have since been washed a hundred times.

No.

It is something far more difficult than that.

You have somehow escaped the boundaries of memory and entered the bloodstream.

You exist now in places that have no language for possession.

In the way I pause before speaking. In the way I linger at doorways. In the way I look at sunsets as though they owe me an explanation.

And every day I discover another room inside myself where you have been living rent-free for years.

The rain carries you.

Not because it reminds me of a particular afternoon, or because we once stood together beneath a storm.

The rain carries you because it arrives unexpectedly, because it touches everything equally, because it disappears before I can hold it.

The morning carries you.

The hour before sunrise, when the world still belongs to silence and even the birds seem unsure whether hope is worth the effort.

The evening carries you too.

Especially the evenings.

Those long, slow-burning hours when shadows stretch themselves thin across the earth and every unfinished thought grows teeth.

People talk about moving on as if the heart were a house.

As if one could simply open a few windows, shake out the dust, change the curtains, and begin again.

But you are not furniture.

You are not an old photograph tucked into a drawer.

You are not a guest who overstayed.

You are part of the foundation now.

Part of the concrete.

Part of the architecture.

And every attempt to remove you feels less like cleaning and more like demolition.

I think that is what nobody tells you about love.

The deepest loves do not leave footprints.

Footprints can be washed away.

They leave roots.

Invisible things.

Things that burrow downward in darkness until they begin drinking from the same underground river that keeps you alive.

And then one day the person is gone, but the roots remain.

Still feeding.

Still growing.

Still mistaking your heart for home.

This will take time.

God, it will take time.

The kind of time cliffs understand while surrendering themselves to the sea.

The kind of time stars understand while crossing impossible distances just to arrive as light in a sky that no longer remembers their names.

The kind of time required to separate smoke from a fire after the fire has already become ash.

Because how do I untangle you from my blood?

Tell me.

How do I convince my pulse that it no longer needs your rhythm?

How do I explain to my lungs that every breath isn't meant to search for traces of you?

How do I teach my thoughts to stop taking your shape the way rivers take the shape of their banks?

Some days I think I am succeeding.

I wake up.

I drink my coffee.

I move through the hours.

And your absence feels manageable.

Almost ordinary.

Then a laugh reaches me from another room.

A certain shade of sunlight falls across a wall.

A stranger turns their head in a way that resembles you for half a second.

And suddenly there you are again.

Everywhere. Nowhere.

Like perfume trapped inside old wood.

Like salt lingering in a shell long after the ocean has withdrawn.

My whole life smells like you.

And perhaps one day it won't.

Perhaps one day the seasons will pass through me without carrying your name folded inside their pockets.

Perhaps the rain will become only rain again.

Perhaps the mornings will stop looking for you.

Perhaps my blood will finally forget the language it learned in your presence.

But not today.

Today, I am still unmaking you.

Slowly. Patiently.

The way winter unlearns itself into spring.

The way a wound becomes a scar without ever quite explaining how.

The way a heart survives the impossible task of carrying someone for so long that losing them feels less like losing a person and more like losing a country.

Guess who forgot he has a Tumblr 🥀🥀🥀

[wondersmithswondelrand]

The Moss Grew Over Our Name

There is a valley I return to whenever the world asks too much of me. I no longer know whether it exists upon the earth or only within the quiet geography of memory, but every path inside it still remembers our footsteps. Each morning the mist rises from the sleeping soil as though the land itself is reluctant to wake, and every blade of grass carries a bead of dew with the tenderness of a prayer too sacred to be spoken aloud. The firmament unfolds slowly above it all, patient as eternity, allowing the first hesitant sunbeam to wander between ancient trees until it finds the place where you once stood. I always arrive a little too late. The light always arrives exactly on time.

You used to tell me that rivers were incapable of keeping secrets because everything entrusted to them eventually found its way downstream. We would sit along the shore watching driftwood surrender itself to the current without complaint, while a small whirlpool beneath the old willow insisted on gathering every wandering leaf as though it believed nothing deserved to be forgotten. You laughed once and said perhaps love behaved the same way—that it did not truly lose the things it carried, only taught them another way to travel. I remember pretending to understand you. Years later, I finally did.

Spring came as it always does, dressed in pollen and impossible promises. The wind wandered through the valley carrying the scent of wildflowers, and every bloomfall looked less like an ending than a celebration too beautiful to last. Fireflies arrived before night had completely settled, tiny fragments of the firmament choosing, for reasons known only to themselves, to descend among us instead of remaining with the stars. We believed beauty repeated itself because it had done so yesterday. We mistook seasons for guarantees. We thought the equinox was balance enough to protect us from every future winter.

Then came the solstice.

Not with thunder.

Not with grief.

Only with a silence so ordinary that neither of us recognized it as the beginning of absence.

The valley remained green. The river continued speaking to the shore. Moss kept quietly clothing forgotten stones in softness. The sunbeam still reached the place where your hands once rested. Even the fireflies returned that evening, faithful to a world that had already begun forgetting us.

Only you did not.

There is a particular cruelty in discovering that nature continues flawlessly after a heart has failed. The mist still rises. The dew still gathers. The soil still accepts every fallen thing without asking whether it deserved to fall. Somewhere another pair of lovers now walks the same path we once believed belonged only to us, stopping beneath the same trees, laughing beneath the same sky, unaware that joy leaves fossils no one can see.

Autumn arrived quietly enough that I almost thanked it.

The leaves withered without resentment. They surrendered themselves to the wind with a grace I have spent years trying to imitate. I watched them descend into the river one by one until the whirlpool gathered them into its endless turning, refusing to let even their endings drift away unnoticed. I remember wondering whether memory was simply another whirlpool—beautiful enough to hold everything, merciless enough to release nothing.

Winter found me exactly where you had left me.

The valley had forgotten my name by then.

Moss had grown over the stones where we used to sit.

The shore no longer carried the shape of our footsteps.

Even the driftwood looked older than I remembered.

Only the firmament remained unchanged, stretching above me with the same impossible indifference beneath which we had once mistaken forever for an ordinary afternoon.

Sometimes I think love is nothing more than becoming a rainshadow.

You spend your whole life carrying clouds toward someone else's horizon until, one day, you realize all your rain has fallen where you can no longer follow. The fields before you remain green because of storms they never witnessed. The earth behind you cracks quietly beneath a sky that has forgotten how to weep.

Still...

Every morning I return.

Not because I expect to find you.

Because somewhere between the mist and the first sunbeam, between the dew that survives only until daylight and the fireflies that borrow the night for just a few brief hours, I can almost believe that time has been moving in the wrong direction all along.

Perhaps rivers never carry anything away.

Perhaps driftwood is simply wood trying to find the tree it once belonged to.

Perhaps withering is only another name for making room.

Perhaps bloomfall is not the death of flowers, but their gentle way of teaching the earth how to bloom again.

Perhaps every rainshadow is proof that somewhere beyond the mountain, rain is still falling.

And perhaps...

If I walk far enough through the valley,

if I follow the river back instead of forward,

if I arrive before the mist has finished becoming morning,

I will find you once more—

waiting quietly beside the shore,

your hands warmed by the first sunbeam,

looking toward the firmament

as though we had not yet learned that goodbye was ever possible.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

The Cathedral I built for your sake

Maybe it was never about the symmetry of love,

never about the quiet arithmetic of two hearts balancing each other.

Maybe it was never meant to be fair.

Maybe the story was never written

with equal lines for both of us.

Because when I look back now,

when I sift through the ruins of what we called us,

I don’t see two people loving with the same weight.

I see one flame

reaching for another

that only ever meant to glow.

Maybe it was never about how much we loved each other.

Maybe that was the lie I told myself

so the loneliness wouldn’t sound so loud.

Maybe it was always simpler than that—

simpler, and crueler.

Maybe it was only ever about

how fiercely

how foolishly

how completely

I loved you.

Because my love was a cathedral

built stone by stone in your name,

while yours was a candle

that flickered kindly

but never promised to stay.

And I don’t blame you for that.

Candles are not meant to be cathedrals.

But God,

how easily I mistook your warmth

for forever.

And when the light finally left,

I stood there in the echo of it,

surrounded by arches and stained glass

that had no purpose anymore.

Because cathedrals are not built

for one man to sit inside them alone.

Still, I remained.

Not because I believed you would return,

but because I did not know

how to unlearn the devotion.

Every corner of me still carried your fingerprints.

Every quiet moment turned into a confession

I had no one left to deliver.

I began to understand something then—

something slow and uncomfortable,

like a truth waking up after a long sleep.

You had loved me, perhaps.

In the small ways people sometimes do.

In passing warmth,

in laughter shared under careless skies,

in moments that felt genuine

while they were happening.

But I had loved you

like a man who thought the universe

had finally whispered his name.

I loved you like someone

who had waited his whole life

for a door to open

and mistook a window for salvation.

And maybe that was never your burden to carry.

Maybe I placed too much sky

in your hands.

Maybe you were never meant

to hold something that vast.

But even now, after the dust has settled,

after the silence has learned my shape,

I cannot say I regret it.

Because for a brief, blinding stretch of time,

I loved you without restraint.

Without calculation.

Without the quiet cynicism

that usually protects the heart.

And though it broke me,

though it left me standing in a cathedral

that no longer had a god—

it was real.

And sometimes I think

that is the cruelest and most beautiful part of it all.

That maybe the story was never meant

to be about us surviving together.

Maybe it was only meant to prove

that I was capable of loving that much at all.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

Death.

The only certainty

that trembles in the corners of every room.

The absolute

we pretend we can outrun.

I wonder what it feels like.

Would it arrive sharp—

like winter biting through ungloved hands,

like flame licking skin until it forgets softness?

Or would it come gently,

like being lifted

without effort,

like the weightless safety

of my father’s arms

when the world was still simple

and sleep was unquestioned?

Would it look monstrous—

a shape the mind cannot hold—

or would it borrow a familiar face,

wear the eyes

of the one I loved most,

so I would not flinch?

I wonder why we fear it

if it is inevitable.

Why we speak of it

in whispers

as if it might overhear

and step closer.

Death is patient.

It does not rush.

It waits at the end of every sentence

without interrupting the paragraph.

We call it cruel

because it takes away breath,

possibility,

all the unfinished drafts

of who we might become.

But maybe—

just maybe—

we were never meant

to hold infinite branches

of what could be.

Maybe the burden

was never the ending,

but the endlessness.

Maybe life is not about collecting futures,

not about clutching at every unopened door,

but about standing in one small room

and feeling it fully—

the warmth of something real,

the sting when it slips away.

Maybe joy is not in possibility

but in making something solid

out of it—

and grief is the price

of loving what might never happen.

Maybe we are here

to learn the texture of being—

to understand breath

because it can stop,

to understand light

because it fades.

And maybe—

the reason death frightens us

is not because it is pain,

but because it is quiet.

An end to the noise,

to the wanting,

to the trying.

The last period

after a long, trembling sentence.

And maybe life—

is simply the lesson

that makes that period

mean something.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

Finally posting the complete writing. Got lazy with finishing it 乁⁠ ⁠˘⁠ ⁠o⁠ ⁠˘⁠ ⁠ㄏ

[wondersmithswondelrand]

[wondersmithswondelrand]

It's been too long since I posted. Honestly I was just exhausted with a lot of stuff going on but I'm finally writing again.

Hopefully lol. I'll post the complete writing soon.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

We all have read the wishes and thoughts of the street lamp. "I wanted to be born as a star but someone had a different idea.

That's how I ended up as a street lamp. I die too soon and flikcer too much. But yesterday I saw a moth trying to kiss me. It almost burned her.

I have heard stars do not get this luxury."

But what about the stars? What do they think? And I gave it a thought and here's what they think.

What We Cannot Touch

We watch you from the black miles,

our heat older than the oceans,

our hearts still burning through the math of ages.

You—small lamp, leaning crooked over cracked pavement—

you think you flicker.

We call it breathing.

Your light trembles like a pulse.

Ours is a roar we can never hush.

You speak of wanting to be born among us.

Do you know what eternity tastes like?

It is cold, even at a million degrees.

It is silence so vast it bruises thought.

We shine without choice.

We shine until we collapse,

and no hand ever cups our warmth,

no insect ever mistakes us for home.

Last night we saw the moth kiss you.

Her wings a tiny prayer,

her body courting danger because you were near enough to reach.

We envied the accident of it,

the sweet peril of your nearness.

Our admirers only point and wish.

They will never feel the sting of our heat

or smell the singe of their own daring.

You think you die too soon.

We have watched galaxies curl into nothing

and still our light must travel centuries

before anyone notices we were alive.

Longevity is not mercy.

It is a slow forgetting stretched across endless dark.

You will go dark in a blink—

and yet someone will have been close enough

to see the last spark leave you.

Flicker, little lamp.

Lean into the moth’s brief love.

Let the night swallow you with the taste of touch still warm.

We will keep burning where no one can kiss us,

jealous of the luxury you mistake for loss.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

The Ache That Devours Itself

There’s a hunger that sits behind my ribs,

gnawing like teeth against bone.

It isn’t clean, it isn’t gentle—

it is feral, clawing,

the kind of ache that makes you pray

for something to rip you open

just so you can breathe again.

I want closeness like it’s oxygen.

Arms that say, “You can fall apart here—

don’t patch your cracks tonight,

don’t pretend you’re whole.

Just let yourself break,

and I will hold the shards.”

I want it with a fever that burns my throat.

But every time I dare to imagine it,

history laughs, sharp as shattered glass:

They’ll leave.

They always leave.

You will hand them your heart,

and they will drop it on the pavement.

So I choke back the need,

starving myself on purpose—

because what’s the point of thirst

if the water always turns to blood in my mouth?

The silence becomes my companion.

Some nights it feels like protection,

other nights it is a coffin with the lid nailed shut.

I tell myself: You are enough.

You are the only presence that cannot abandon you.

But the echo answers back:

Then why do you still feel so forsaken?

I dissect my ruins like a surgeon—

where did I fail?

Did I smother them with my too-muchness?

Did I starve them with my not-enough?

Or was I simply standing still

when the lightning chose its victim?

The truth cuts deeper:

not every fracture was my fault,

but the scars still spell my name.

And I can’t scrub them clean.

What I need is small, and yet impossible.

Not tomorrow, not forever—

just one night of safety.

One night where I don’t pace the room

like a dog waiting for a master

who will never come home.

One night where my chest

doesn’t collapse under the weight

of my own unworthiness.

One night where pain

doesn’t feel like proof of existence.

But the arms I want are ghosts.

The voices I need are ash.

And all that’s left is me,

a body caged with its own echoes.

So I tell myself—

if no one will stay,

then I will try.

Not because I believe in survival,

but because the alternative terrifies me more.

Because even in this hopelessness,

a part of me still claws upward,

still whispers through bloodied teeth:

Stay. Just one more night.

Even if the light never comes,

be here to see the darkness through.

And that’s the cruelest hope of all—

that I will keep breathing

for a dawn

I may never see.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

I'm learning to breathe without you

It's been a week since I last talked to her on call. Or properly if that half ass info sounds proper. But. I've stopped yearning for her. I do not feel that I'm incomplete without her. That my day needs her. That having her is important, necessary even. It's just been a week. I still miss her. Things still remind me of her. The moon. The calls at 3am. The walking around in an area I used to talk to her. Some songs I can't listen to the same. Some posts. Sometimes when I feel tired or need some appreciation or validation of my existence. But, she's not needed anymore. It's a good thing. It's a necessary thing. There's still a teeny tiny ache in my heart because of that. There's still some guilt for doing what I did. For leaving her and pushing her out of my life without any warning. But it does not eat me anymore. Maybe having more people even if just to share reels helped. Maybe talking in discord for 10mins whenever helped. Maybe being busy a little more. But I don't feel anxious. I don't feel my heart gripping and squeezing thinking of her. She's a happy memory. The most precious one. Or maybe not. Maybe it's me, punishing myself, forcing myself to miss her, to give her importance forcefully. Because I can't remember her voice properly. It's just been a week. Maybe it's me who's remembering her because otherwise all the anxiety, the spiral, the guilt, the insecurity I had would be for nothing. Maybe I'm just scared to let go completely for I'll think of myself as a bad person to have done that. I don't know. Yet. I'm still learning more about me. There's a lot to learn. I'm still unwrapping myself and seeing what's inside and it'll take time. I won't rush it. I won't ler others dictate it. I'll just be. I'll get tired. I'll get exhausted. I'll need someone to hold me. I'll feel maybe it's not worth it. Maybe nothing is worth it. Maybe it's better to just...let of of life. I'll also think this song is so good. This reel is so funny. The water tastes serene. The moon is beautiful because she's herself and not her. The night time is beautiful because it's that and not because of her. This person is so sweet. This person is funny. This tree looks more green. This cloud is so mesmerizing. That I'm worth the pain and suffering and the joy and warmth I've ever had.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

I built her a garden inside my chest.

Rivers of time ran through it,

and every day I carried buckets of devotion

to water seeds that weren’t mine to plant.

I thought if I gave enough,

if I bent low enough,

if I kept the soil warm with my breath,

she would root herself here

and call it home.

She came, yes.

She traced her fingers through the flowers,

smiled at the way they bent toward her,

but her steps were light,

like someone visiting a place they never meant to stay.

She whispered sweetness like rain—

soft, fleeting—

and I drank it like I’d been dying of thirst

my entire life.

But rain is not the same as presence.

Petals are not the same as roots.

And I, blind with hunger,

could not see the difference.

So the garden grew wild.

Vines of longing wrapped around my lungs,

choking, tightening.

Hours stretched into deserts—

me waiting for her return,

me watching the path for footsteps

that came too late,

or not at all.

When she left, she left half-stories behind:

“I am in pain, but I cannot tell you why.”

“There is someone else, perhaps,

but I will explain when the time is right.”

Words like broken statues,

their heads missing,

their hands reaching for nothing.

And I, foolish caretaker,

kept sweeping the shards,

believing if I arranged them long enough,

they’d resemble the truth.

I missed the truth entirely.

That this was never mine to hold.

That the garden was dying,

and my chest was the only soil that suffered.

So I set fire to it.

Blocked the gates.

Watched 1,500 photos turn to ash,

watched purple lose its color,

watched my own heart scream betrayal

as I struck the match.

And now—

now I walk in smoke.

Every star I see reminds me of her eyes.

Every silence rattles like her absence.

I tell myself, “You chose peace,”

but grief claws at the word like an animal.

Because peace feels cruel when it arrives this way.

Because love, even half-given,

leaves a scar deeper than absence.

But I know this:

She was never the garden.

She was never the goddess.

She was never the answer.

I was the soil,

I was the temple,

I was the flame.

And though I ache,

though I wander through ruins with empty hands,

my chest is still earth.

My ribs are still pillars.

My lungs are still fire.

There will be more seeds.

There will be more prayers.

There will be warmth again,

but this time not for burning myself alive.

This time, for me.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

I buried her voice in the silence of my phone,

but still I press the empty glass to my ear,

listening for echoes,

for the ghost of a laugh

that once poured like honey into my starving chest.

She gave me sugar,

but laced it with hours of waiting,

half-truths and hollow reassurances

that left my hands shaking at the thought of being unseen.

Sweet words that melted quick

and left the aftertaste of poison.

I miss her—

not the real her,

but the dream stitched together from

her “baby” in the middle of the night,

the way she let me believe

I was the constant in a world that drops people

like coins slipping through a torn pocket.

My body remembers better.

It remembers the ache of hours staring at a screen,

the sharp chest pain of silence,

the begging for scraps of presence,

the way I swallowed my own hurt

just to keep her comfortable.

My mind replays the sweetness.

My body replays the cost.

And together they drag me down into this pit

where love feels like withdrawal

and peace feels like betrayal.

I blocked her—

a coward’s act,

a survivor’s act,

a child’s act of finally shutting the door

before the storm blew the house down.

And now guilt sits heavy,

pressing its hand against my throat,

asking if I became the very monster

that scarred me in the first place.

But I know the truth.

I loved until it hurt more than it healed.

I reached until my arms ached from holding air.

And when my chest split open,

when my body screamed enough,

I listened.

So I grieve.

For the dream of her,

for the boy who thought sugar was enough,

for the nights when even poison tasted like warmth.

And I walk.

Heavy, guilty, shaking—

but walking still.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

The moon is getting lonely,

she told me about it last night.

She says she has the stars,

but all of them so far.

She reaches out to maybe, just maybe,

hold one in her arms.

But none of them close enough.

The moon and the stars look like companions,

friend,

maybe even lovers.

Yet they're not.

Yet she's lonely.

She talks to me about it.

Two lonely beings, talk about loneliness.

She says the stars admire her beauty,

but none stay long enough to know her scars.

They twinkle at her face,

but never ask what it costs to shine.

They call her radiant—

but no one asks if the glow is heavy to carry.

And I tell her,

I know that weight too.

To be adored, yet never held,

to be seen, yet never truly touched.

We are mirrors,

reflecting light that isn’t even ours,

just so others can dream beneath us.

Sometimes she weeps behind the clouds,

pretending it’s the rain’s fault.

But I hear it in her voice,

the trembling hush of someone

who has never been chosen,

only gazed at from afar.

She told me she envies the earth—

with oceans that kiss its shores,

with trees that touch its skin,

with lives that cling to its chest

like desperate children.

She envies its chaos,

its mess, its noise—

because at least it is not alone.

And when she goes quiet,

I whisper to her:

perhaps the lonely only understand the lonely,

perhaps you and I

were meant to be a secret constellation—

not dazzling, not noticed,

but together,

finally close enough.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

To be loved is to be seen

To be loved is not just a hand held in passing,

not just a smile offered because politeness demands it—

it is the quiet thunder of someone’s eyes finding you

in a crowded room where you thought you were invisible,

their gaze unpeeling your layers

like the ocean revealing shipwrecks

long buried under salt and silence.

To be seen is to be named without words,

to be recognized the way the stars recognize each other

across centuries of distance,

their light crossing impossible gulfs

just to whisper, I know you.

It is someone pressing their ear to your chest

and hearing not just the beating of a heart

but the storms, the cracks, the earthquakes

that built the rhythm in the first place.

To be loved is to be held

in the memory of someone else’s bones,

to be mapped like constellations

on the inside of their eyelids,

to be remembered even in the dark,

even in absence, even when

you are nothing but a trembling shadow

on the wall of their thoughts.

To be seen is to have someone notice

the way your voice trembles on certain syllables,

the way you flinch when doors slam,

the way you guard your laughter

like a rare bird afraid of hunters.

It is someone saying:

I saw that. I see you. You don’t have to explain.

To be loved is to be carved into another person’s time,

to be granted a corner of their breath,

a share of their exhaustion,

a piece of their midnight silence.

It is to be given not just what they have,

but what they don’t—

their strength when they are weak,

their tenderness when they are frayed,

their light when their own world goes dim.

And so the truth coils around itself:

to be loved is to be seen.

To be seen is to be loved.

There is no border between them,

no clean line separating sight from devotion.

One is the flame, the other the glow.

One is the hand reaching, the other the hand grasping.

One says I see you as you are,

the other replies and I still stay.

And in that infinite loop,

where love and sight consume each other,

we are finally whole.

Not perfect. Not unbroken.

But whole.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

To be seen, to be loved

To be loved is to be seen—

not in the way light brushes across skin,

but in the way shadows cling to bone,

the way silence memorizes every breath,

the way your name burns in the throat of night

long after sound has died.

To be seen is to be stripped.

Not naked in the body—

that’s child’s play,

that’s surface-level hunger.

But naked in the marrow,

in the trembling that hides behind laughter,

in the fear that tastes like metal on your tongue.

It is to stand in the burning cathedral of another’s eyes

and feel every stained-glass fracture

sliced into your soul.

To be loved—

is to have someone kneel at the altar of your ruin,

pressing kisses to the broken edges,

not to fix you,

but to remind you

that the cracks are scripture,

that your bleeding is holy.

To be seen—

is to be hunted.

Every mask ripped away,

every false smile shattered,

every wall you thought could protect you

torn down like paper in a storm.

And yet you let it happen,

because the hunter’s gaze is softer than mercy

and sharper than knives.

What is love if not dissection?

A scalpel pressed into your chest

not to kill,

but to open you wide,

to scoop out the secrets you swore

you’d carry to your grave,

and hold them in trembling palms

like stolen fire.

And what is being seen if not resurrection?

To know someone has touched

the rot in your veins,

the dark corners where even you refuse to look,

and still whispers—

beautiful.

It is unbearable,

this collision of gaze and grace,

this drowning in recognition.

To be loved is to be seen.

To be seen is to be loved.

There is no difference—

only the violence of intimacy,

the holy wound that never stops bleeding.

So take my face in your hands,

strip me bare until the ghosts fall silent,

and let me shatter under the weight of your eyes.

Do not look away.

Do not ever look away.

For in your gaze I become—

and without it, I rot.

To be loved is to be seen.

To be seen is to be loved.

And I would bleed myself dry,

tear out every vein,

every fear,

every desperate, clinging prayer—

just to remain in that sight.

Just to remain

in you.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

And if you’d let me, I’d bring you the stars. Not because I think you need them, not because I think you’re incomplete without them—but because loving you makes me greedy, makes me want to give you more than this world can ever really hold. You don’t even realize, do you? How you light me up just by existing. You’ll laugh it off, roll your eyes, tell me I’m exaggerating—but I swear, love, every time I look at you, I feel like I’ve already found the closest thing to heaven I’ll ever touch. And it scares me, how much I want this, how much I want you.

Because the truth is… I fell harder than I ever planned to. I fought it, I tried to be casual, tried to tell myself it’s just comfort, just closeness, just timing—but fuck, no. It’s you. It’s always been you. And maybe I’m too late, maybe the moment passed, maybe you’ve already learned how to stand without me, maybe you’ve already convinced yourself I wasn’t worth falling for again. But if you’d let me—if you’d even crack open that door a little—I’d pour every damn piece of myself through it just to prove I mean this.

You once said love shouldn’t hurt. And I get that now. Because it hurts only when I’m holding it all in, when I’m sitting across from you pretending this isn’t clawing at my chest, pretending I’m not dying to reach over and take your hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world. But I do it—I hold it back—because I’m scared of losing what we already have. You’re still here, still close, still laughing with me, still letting me into your days. And I don’t want to fuck that up. I don’t want to gamble the closeness we have for a chance at something you might not even want. But still, love… the wanting doesn’t stop.

Every little thing you do drags me deeper—the way you laugh when you’re caught off guard, the way you talk when you’re passionate about something, the way you sit quietly when words fail you. Do you even know how magnetic you are? Do you even realize you’re the kind of person people write books about? I don’t think you do. And maybe that’s part of why I’m sitting here, confessing like a damn fool, spilling this mess of words in the hope that you’ll hear me and not run.

And if you’d let me, I’d carry your worst days with you. I’d shoulder the weight when you’re tired, I’d remind you how loved you are when your reflection feels heavy, I’d make sure you never forget that someone in this universe is stubbornly, stupidly, endlessly proud of you. Because I don’t want just the stars—I want you, in all your versions: messy, quiet, loud, broken, brilliant, tired, alive. You don’t need to be perfect for me, you don’t even need to be okay all the time. You just need to be you. And if you’d let me, I’ll stay. Always.

I’m not asking for promises. I’m not asking for a fairytale. I’m not even asking for forever. I’m just asking… let me in. Let me prove that I can love you without breaking what’s already fragile. Let me prove that no matter how the world spins, I’ll still be here, looking at you like you hung the constellations yourself. Because maybe you don’t need saving, maybe you don’t even need me. But fuck, love, I need you. And if you’d let me—I’ll bring you the stars.

[wondersmithswondelrand]

She had been the first to fall, the first to let her guard slip, the first to whisper feelings in between laughter that hung heavier than air. He hadn’t expected it—her sudden vulnerability, her trust, the way she reached for him without hesitation. At first, he held her feelings gently, like a fragile thing he wasn’t sure he deserved. And then, slowly, relentlessly, he stumbled into the abyss himself. What began as curiosity turned into fascination, and fascination into something that burned him alive. He fell harder, deeper, with no plan of stopping. She had once been the anchor and the storm, but now she had stepped back, untangling herself, moving on with a steadiness that made him ache. She could laugh with him the same way she did before, but the weight behind it had shifted. He noticed it every time—the ease with which she treated what once felt sacred, the softness that was now platonic, familiar, ordinary. He remained, because leaving her life felt impossible. Yet every moment with her was a reminder of the truth—she had loved, she had let go, and he was still catching up, still falling even when there was nothing left to land on.

He hated how the memory of her confessions still lived in his head, how they haunted him when he was alone at night. The way she once said she wanted him, needed him, cherished him—it replayed in echoes he couldn’t silence. And yet, when he looked at her now, the warmth was different, casual, stripped of longing. She still cared, of course she did, but in a way that resembled holding a friend’s hand instead of reaching for a lover’s heart. He envied the ease she carried, the way she had untied herself without breaking apart, how she still spoke to him every day like nothing had shifted. For her, it hadn’t been the end of the world—it had been a passing storm. But for him, it had been an earthquake, one that cracked his chest open and left him trying to gather the rubble into something livable again. And yet, he stayed, clinging to their closeness like a starving man clutching crumbs. Right person, wrong time—that was the cruelest joke. Because what was he supposed to do with someone who felt like home but had already sold the house? He couldn’t hate her. He couldn’t leave her. He could only ache beside her.

Every conversation with her felt like standing on the edge of something sacred and forbidden. She would tell him about her day, about the silly details of her life, about her frustrations and victories—and he would listen like a devout believer clinging to prayer. To her, he was a confidant, a constant presence she trusted without hesitation. To him, she was everything he had ever wanted and everything he couldn’t have. The closeness was both salvation and torture. He could joke with her, tease her, laugh with her, and for a moment it felt like nothing had changed. But then reality would press down on him, whispering that what he felt no longer lived inside her. She had moved forward, into a world where their love wasn’t the center of gravity anymore. And he—he was caught in orbit, circling endlessly, unable to break free. He had chances to step back, to loosen his grip, but every time he tried, she pulled him back without even realizing it. She didn’t have to beg him to stay. He couldn’t imagine a life without her in it, even if the version he had now was a pale reflection of the one he once craved.

He told himself he was trying to move on, that one day the sharpness of it all would dull. He repeated it like a mantra, like medicine he hoped might heal. But the truth was cruel—he didn’t want to move on. Not really. Because to let go of her was to let go of the best thing that had ever happened to him, even if it no longer belonged to him the way it once did. Right person, wrong time—the phrase gnawed at him like a curse. If they had met years later, if circumstances had been different, if life hadn’t placed its hand so heavy between them, maybe their story would’ve unfolded differently. But love doesn’t wait for perfect timing. She had loved him when she could. He had loved her when it was already too late. Now, they existed in this strange, delicate in-between. She still trusted him with her secrets, still leaned on him in moments of weakness, still made him laugh until he forgot how much it hurt. And he? He tried to stand tall beside her, tried to pretend his heart wasn’t breaking anew every time she reminded him—in her kindness, her distance—that she was already gone.

It was the small things that destroyed him. The way she still said good morning, the way she still sent him songs, the way she still asked about his day. To anyone else, it would’ve seemed trivial, just the rhythm of a friendship that refused to fade. But for him, each word carried history, each gesture carried memory. He remembered when those good mornings came with confessions tucked between them, when those songs were chosen because they reflected the weight of her feelings, when her questions weren’t just polite but hungry for the pieces of his soul. Now, the gestures remained but the meaning had changed, stripped down to something platonic, safe. It killed him how easy she made it look, how effortlessly she redefined their closeness. He wondered if she ever thought about what they were, what they could’ve been. Or if he was the only one cursed to replay it all like a film he couldn’t stop watching. She had fallen first. He had fallen harder. And now, she had climbed out of the pit, dusted herself off, moved forward. But he was still at the bottom, staring up, hoping she might turn back—even when he knew she wouldn’t.

Sometimes he caught himself imagining what it would be like to finally let go. To stop waiting for something that wasn’t coming back. To cut the string that tethered him to her and walk away, free. But the thought made his chest ache with something worse than longing—emptiness. Because who was he without her woven into his days? Who was he without her laughter spilling through his phone, her words filling his silence? She had become part of his foundation, and ripping her out felt like tearing out the floorboards beneath him. Moving on wasn’t as simple as finding someone else. It wasn’t as simple as distracting himself with work, or friends, or time. Moving on meant erasing the version of himself that existed because of her, the one who had been remade by love that was real, even if it was short-lived. And maybe that was why he stayed. Because even if it hurt, even if it tore him apart piece by piece, at least it meant he was still tethered to her in some way. Even if he had to live in the shadow of what they once were, it was better than living in a world where she was gone.

They say love changes but never disappears, and maybe that’s the truth he’s living now. What they have isn’t what it was. It’s not the wild, reckless tenderness of those early days. It’s not the fire of confessions whispered too late at night. But it is something—steady, enduring, intimate in its own way. They are still close, still bound by a trust that neither distance nor time has managed to unravel. Yet every time he looks at her, he knows he is carrying more than she is. She carries him like a friend, a companion, someone she’ll never lose. He carries her like a wound and a miracle, both bleeding and healing him at once. Right person, wrong time. Maybe one day the words won’t sting as much. Maybe one day he’ll find someone else who makes him feel the same way. But for now, she remains both his comfort and his undoing. She had fallen first. He had fallen harder. She had moved on. And he was still learning what it meant to live in the aftershock, where the earth beneath him was cracked but still held her name.