The Nonconformist Culture

I loved you
longer than you ever knew how to stand still for.

I reached for you
and felt the armor,
the way your body answered questions
your mouth never could.

You didn’t shut me out because you didn’t care.
You shut me out
because closeness asked something of you
your childhood had taught you
was dangerous.

I tried to be gentle enough
that you wouldn’t run.
I tried to be patient enough
that you wouldn’t disappear.
Somewhere in that trying,
I learned how lonely love can be
when you’re the only one open.

I saw the softness you hid.
I saw the boy who learned too early
that needing someone
meant losing yourself.
I loved you there—
in the places you kept locked,
even from yourself.

There was so much potential it hurt to touch it.
A future that kept almost happening.
Moments that felt like they were about to bloom
and then folded back into fear.

You couldn’t meet me where I was.
Not because I asked too much—
but because what I offered
was something you were never given.

And still,
after all this time,
love lingers.
Not loud.
Not desperate.
Just present.

A quiet grief
for the version of us
that might have existed
if your past
had loosened its grip on your heart.

I miss you,
and I carry the grief
of the versions of ourselves
we couldn’t reach in time—
the people we might have become
if staying hadn’t hurt us both.