Orbit

There is a version of usthat speaks plainly.

It sits somewhere just outside the edgeof every conversation we have.

Not gone.Not unreachable.Just orbiting.

Like two moons caught in the same gravitytrying not to collide.

We keep touching the edges of it.

Your name inside my words.My pauses inside your questions.The way we ask if each other is okay without asking the thing underneath.

The way I answer carefully,like someone carrying water in shaking hands.

Neither of us says:I’m scared.

But it lives there anyway.

In every single question.In every pause. In the sudden need to clarify intention instead of feeling.

We keep walking the perimeter of something alive enough to change us.

And maybe that’s what this has become: a delicate choreography between truth and preservation.Which one wins? 

You come toward me in careful portions.

Enough to keep me near.But Never enough to force a reckoning.

And I let it happen.

I keep translating silence into mercy.

Keep telling myself restraint is maturityinstead of fear.
It’s also anxiety, though. 

Because there are things between that breathe differently now.

Things that have names no one is brave enough to speak.

So instead we circle.

Careful.Measured.Protective until not. ButAlmost tender.

Like if we move too fast the whole thing could split open, will split and leave us standing inside a truth neither of us knows how to survive.
We ask without asking: 

Do I/you still exist to you the way I/you used to?

Do I/you still reach for me/ you emotionally when one of us leaves the room?

Am I/you becoming someone dangerous in my/your story?

And beneath answers there are more questions.

If I say what hurts, will this, me, us disappear?

If I finally ask directly, will I lose the version of this I’ve been protecting inside myself?

So we keep orbiting.

Close enough to feel the pull.Far enough to pretend this is sustainable.

The orbit only worksas long as nobody asks where we’re actually going.

And maybe the saddest part is this:

I still think we both know exactly what’s happening to us.

We’re just trying to decidewhether naming it
would save us

or end us.