EPHEMERA

I have carried entire conversations in the silence between my ribs. Words that learned how to sit quietly, how to fold themselves into smiles, how to become glances instead of confessions. Some nights, I wonder what would have happened if my heart had been braver than my tongue. If I had told you that every ordinary day became a little softer when your name appeared in it. But perhaps some feelings are not meant to be spoken. Perhaps they are meant to live like pressed flowers between pages, unfinished and beautiful because they were never touched. And years from now, when memory visits me, it will not ask what I said. It will ask what I loved enough to remain silent about.