The Nonconformist Culture

I loved you
the way you love something fragile—
with patience,
with care,
with all I could hold without breaking it.

You loved me
from behind old doors,
careful not to let the hinges creak,
afraid that if you opened too wide
something would be taken from you again.

I saw how closeness scared you.
How my fears felt like a trap.
How pushing away wasn’t absence,
but armor learned too young.

I kept offering you safety,
not realizing
you didn’t yet know how to live
without guarding yourself from it.

There was so much potential between us—
not imagined,
not exaggerated—
real and breathing and waiting.
But the past kept stepping between us,
answering for you
when you couldn’t.

I don’t write this with anger.
I write it with grief.
Because I loved you deeply,
and I still do,
in that quiet way love becomes
when it desperately searches,
but has no place to go.

I saw you clearly.
I loved you honestly.
And even now, after all this time,
that truth remains—
as an ode
to what was real,
and what you weren’t yet ready to hold.