if you’re asleep, i hope this finds you drifting softly among the stars, dreaming about the life you want to live, feeling that quiet pull of what you long to do. i hope you find solace in the small things—how you know yourself best—and protect your peace, gently, against whatever currents try to pull you under.
if you’re awake, phone screen lighting your face in the dark, thumb hovering over my name, half-caught between wanting and waiting, i hope you’re kind to the way your mind spirals back.
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yesterday i made coffee at 3:42am, the grinder too loud for that hour so i used the french press instead, counting mississippis while thinking about how you laugh. not the polite version but the real one—starts silent, shoulders moving first, then this sudden breath like you’re surprised by your own joy, the half-second delay before actual sound. by the time the coffee was ready i’d catalogued four other instances. we’ve met twice. my brain is building a case from insufficient evidence.
that night i drafted three texts. the first asked if you got home safe—i sent that one because that’s how i was raised. the second said i’d been thinking about our conversation. true, but too vulnerable. the third was just “hey.” maximum deniability. those last two sit in my notes app. last night, i thought of uber’ing across town just to give you a hug. not because you asked. because i wanted thirty seconds in your physical space.
i don’t just want you. i want the wanting itself.
yearning is a recursive loop, i find—you want the person, but you also want the state of wanting because it proves you still believe in transformation. that your life isn’t finished. that who you are isn’t fixed. that the right person could cultivate a space where you’re comfortable in your own skin.
when you said that it took time for you to let people in, part of me panicked. if we figure it out—yes or no—this state ends. right now everything is possible. i can draft 2am texts and think about bringing you your pumpkin spice latte and it all means i’m someone who still does this. someone who hasn’t optimized connection into a spreadsheet. when we talked last saturday my nervous system lit up like touching an electric fence. static from fingertips to sternum. i kept touching my chest on a walk later that night, checking if the charge was still there, extending how long i could hold that feeling.
most of my life is controlled. i plan meals, track sleep, answer emails within twenty-four hours, maintain friendships through scheduled coffee dates. i’m twenty-four and already running efficiently. but yearning doesn’t respect that. it makes me irrational in ways that feel sacred. i google the distance to your neighborhood at 2am. fourty minutes. i’ve memorized which coffee shops are between us. i draft emails i’ll never send. i want to drive across town monday night for a thirty-second hug. the stupidity feels like evidence—i’m still capable of wanting past the point where it makes sense.
L wrote once: “it’s a choice, because you look at the tapestry of feelings you’re feeling; you draw a boundary around them and say ‘these, i’ve decided they’re love’.” at 4:41am this tuesday, last week of october, i’ve drawn that boundary again. despite what my brain says—two meetings isn’t enough entry points, i’m constructing narrative faster than reality supports it—i’ve decided these feelings are love because i need them to be.
not because you need me to love you. you said you were raised to self-regulate, to fix problems rather than process feelings. i saw it in how you held the coffee mug filled with wine—both hands wrapped around the mug but never quite drinking, like comfort was something to hold but not consume. that my instinct to comfort you was confusing. i heard that. but i’m being kind to the loop. letting it run until it tires. whether you pace toward me or away, whether this becomes a story or a footnote, the wanting has already changed me. i’m sitting here at 4:41am, coffee cold now, typing this out because the feeling needs somewhere to go:
wanting to want is wanting twice over. and that’s enough for me.