We Were Just Early

I want you,

not in the reckless, ruin-me way

I used to confuse for love,

but in the quiet, steady ache

that knows your name

and still chooses restraint.

There’s a version of us

I can almost touch,

two people tempered by time,

not breaking under the weight of feeling,

but building with it.

Stronger hands, steadier hearts,

no longer mistaking intensity for foundation.

If we met there,

in that better place,

we wouldn’t just be good,

we would be something spoken about

in the same breath as myth.

The kind of love that makes old legends

feel like bedtime stories,

soft and small in comparison.

But we are not there.

Not yet.

Right now, loving you

feels like trying to grow in winter,

everything in me reaching,

everything in me freezing.

So I choose the harder truth:

that wanting you

and choosing myself

cannot live in the same moment.

I will heal.

Even if it means

letting the idea of us

rest unfinished.

And maybe one day,

when we’ve both become

who we needed to be,

we’ll cross paths again

without breaking.

And we’ll see it clearly then:

we weren’t wrong.

Just early.