there’s a difference
between loving someone
and being in love with them.

i know that now.
because i love you,
in the way that feels steady,
in the way i’d hold your hand through anything,
in the way you live in my days
without needing to try.

but i am also in love with you.
and that’s different.

that’s why i think of you
when my legs ache
and my chest burns
and i want to quit,
because once,
you said pain means progress.
and somehow, that stayed.

it’s why your laugh feels like sunlight.
why the shape of your name
sits softly in the back of my throat
when i’m too shy to say it.
why i memorize your voice
like it’s the only music
i’ll ever need to hear again.

being in love means
i don’t just want you near me,
i want to be seen by you.
known by you.
still wanted anyway.

and that’s what scares me.
not the loving,
but how deeply i feel it.
how much i want to deserve it.
how quiet the ache gets
when you say my name
like i’ve never been too much.

there’s a difference.
and i know it
because i love you,
and i am in love with you.

and that truth
doesn’t hurt
quite like it used to.

you’re in the sky,
and i’m still here,
counting clouds
and minutes
until you land safely,
until you message me back,
and feel, again,
like the world makes sense.

hey love,
i know you’re only gonna up there for a little while,
but i’ve been missing you this whole time.
i keep thinking about you in the clouds,
somewhere between here and there,
and how even the sky feels a little quieter
when you’re not around.
how far are you away from me now,
at this moment?
i hope vacation is good to you,
but not too good.
i want you to come back.
i miss you already.

i’m only seventeen,
i don’t know anything.

but i know i miss you.

i poeticize too much.
a glance becomes a story,
a pause becomes a metaphor.
you say “hi”
and suddenly i’m writing about the way
your voice cuts through the noise in my chest.

i turn us into sonnets
before we’ve even lived the scene.
your hand brushes mine
and it’s a whole stanza
about skin and gravity
and how maybe the universe
meant for this moment to happen.

you say “i didn’t sleep much last night,”
and i think:
the moon must’ve been jealous
of how bright you were yesterday.
i poeticize.
because the truth,
as it stands,
feels too raw.
too terrifying.
too good.

so i cover it in metaphors
and rhyme it with prettier pain
until it sounds like a poem
instead of a prayer.
and maybe that’s my way
of saying
i love you.

not in a loud, bright way.
but in the margins of notebooks,
in lyrics i never share,
in every sentence i twist
just to feel closer to you.

i poeticize
because plain words
can’t hold you.
but maybe
poetry can.
maybe i can learn to, too.

summer with you
will be
forbidden meetings
and “tell me about your day.”
laughing in whispers,
loving in glances,
missing each other
endlessly and unforgivingly.

it will be
the ache of wanting more
and the sweetness of having enough.
murmurs of nothing across screens,
and talking in code,
listening to songs that only we understand.

it will be
the quiet promise
that we’ll stick together
in every way we know how.
new, different,
a little secret,
but still,
undeniably us.

forbidden doesn’t mean unloved.
it just means we had to get clever,
had to learn the quiet art
of slipping past the noise,
finding each other
in the cracks between rules.

we speak in hush tones
through fake personas,
a call tucked
into the folds of night,
your laugh breaking softly
against my ear like tide.

they told us “no,”
so we invented yes
in the language only we know.
stolen minutes,
a heartbeat shared
over a signal no one can trace.

the world doesn’t see
what it means when you say my name
like it’s a promise.
but i do.

and maybe we’re breaking the rules,
but we are not breaking each other.
we are not wrong.
we are not alone.
forbidden doesn’t mean unloved,
it just means
we love anyway.