I carry my heart like a secret flame,
hidden behind careful glances and small calculations
behind easy laughter that trembles
- always at the edge of an intuitive confession.

You, with your steady eyes,
lean in as though love is simply intuitive —
as though it can be freely spoken without
restraint.
I feel the pull of you like a tide against my cautious shore.
You reach, relentless, trying to close the gap,
but my fear is thunder: don’t step too close,
don’t risk the break.

Then, sudden and inevitable, I feel you slip—

I can feel you slipping—
not because you want to,
but because I don’t dare
catch you with both hands.

If I admit it,
the whole sky may tilt,
and my fragile heart will choose preservation.

So, I smile,
pretend to be safe in the distance,
while love presses at my ribs while slipping through my fingers
aching for the courage to call your name.

You arrive, and I have just left.

I sit feeling the warmth of the seat right after you left,

Your footsteps echo through streets
where mine have already faded.
We move like shadows on opposite clocks,
our maps overlapping
but never quite touching.

The world conspires against us —
planes lift me just as yours land,
I close doors as yours swing open.
We orbit the same horizon,
yet remain two stars
caught in uncompromising skies.

Still, every city holds a piece of us:
a chair in a café where you waited for me,
a record store where I dreamed of you.
I tell myself
that one day,
the timetables will break,
the cities will align,
and our wandering will finally
collapse into the same street,
the same hour,
the same breath.

The way it used to be,

The way it should be,

The way we want it to be.

Until then: postcards, missed trains, endless messages—
we love in margins and the hush of “almost.”

In Nairobi, beneath the violet jacarandas,
we met — sudden, breathless,
as if the city conspired
to collide two wondering souls.
What I expected to be awkward
unfolded into a whirlwind,
a beginning written in fire,
unlocking my forgotten play.

In Rome, eternity pressed down
from arches and stones.
I carried silence like an amulet,
you answered in fragments,
then vanished when it grew too real.
Yet across the Tiber
I still heard your voice — tender,
each note a promise,
each pause a wound.

In New York, where it all began,
restless and unrepentant,
we circle but never release the pull.
Sharing songs, trading jabs,
saying good night but never meaning goodbye.
Where perhaps we could live inside a song,
Nat King Cole’s When I Fall in Love,
no longer circling,
but arriving, at last, in each other.

And like Casablanca,
with its bittersweet refrain,
I know only this:
we’ll always have Paris —
though ours is Nairobi, Rome, New York —
cities stitched with longing,
each one a verse in our unfinished hymn.

We are the echo of music,
the ache of unsent words,
the gravity of eyes that cannot lie.
Call me amore or call me nothing at all — still, you return,
and still, I cannot let you go.

Perhaps this is love:
not possession, not clarity,
but the endless return —
tenderly, dangerously,
until the final note fades,
and still the jacarandas bloom.

Sixteen years today,

and the air still smells of the first rain

that carried us into each other’s arms when you used to drive to New York to see me or pick me up from Union Station when I would come to see you. 

Back then, love was a fever—

an unquestioned truth,

a flag we planted in the middle of a field

we did not know was sinking.

You were acclimated to streets cracking

under the weight of history,

where the light was always earned,

never given.

I came from rooms with air that never sweated,

from windows that opened only to the sound of someone else mowing the lawn.

We spoke the same language of longing,

but our dialects betrayed us - in the end.

My world was soft hands and that certain assurance of abundance.

Yours was calloused palms,

the quiet arithmetic of scarcity.

You thought love could be a refuge—

I thought it could be a rebellion.

We did not know

how heavy love becomes

when it must carry two worlds

that refuse to meet in the middle.

Years blurred into a single aching season of silent discomfort.

I watched you drift toward the ease I understood,

and you stayed rooted in the struggle you could not abandon.

My gaze towards you became a polite winter,

Your storm towards me no longer reached the shore.

On the day we signed our divorce papers,

the pen felt heavier than the rings we once wore,

We smiled like two diplomats

after a failed treaty,

I was certain I had tried— you were still certain that we were meant to be - to live in each other’s house that we almost completely built.

Sixteen years,

and you still  wake to the echo of my laugh

in rooms we no longer share.

We were not wrong to make love.

We were wrong to believe

that love alone could erase the border

between your sky and mine.

We did the thing. We tried.

You could give them the whole night sky,
every star polished by the calloused edges of your own longing,
and still they would squint,
asking why the moon didn’t shine brighter.

It’s not that they don’t see you.
They do.
They orbit around you seeing flashes —
the quicksilver shine of your laugh,
the everbearing heat in your eyes when you believe in something too much – too much.
But it’s never enough to anchor them.

Because their world was carved from softer, less fertile soil,
a place where the ground never had to be fought for,
where the air was always warm with someone else’s certainty.
They don’t know the weight of making yourself
from dust and grit and your mother’s, even your grandmother’s stubborn prayers.
They don’t know that kind of love that fights in daylight and still makes tea at night.

And so, they take tiny pieces of you —
the poetry in your elegant walk,
the history in your gained scars,
the specific taste of your name in their mouth —
and carry them like souvenirs from a city they never plan to live in – like Roma or Paris.

You could stand before them in the fullness of who you are,
and they would still be half-leaning toward their world,
the one that taught them love is a convenience, not a covenant.

So you smile that slow, tired smile.
You let them keep their safe distance.
And when the door closes — soft, not slamming —
you remember that your worth was never meant to be weighed
on scales they inherited.

Raising the lens, eager to capture the pulse of now—

the shimmer of light on skin,

the flicker of curious eyes,

the whisper of a contained breath.

Click.

But it’s gone.

The magic dissolved in time’s swift current.

I chase it like a shadow on a windy day,

reaching, grasping for what’s already moved on.

The frame holds the stillness,

but the world rushes forward,

unbothered by the click,

unaware of the moment I fought to keep—

a laugh, a glance,

too quick, too wild

for anything but the heart’s memory.

The lens catches the image,

but not the warmth of the feeling,

that fleeting spark that disappears

as soon as it appears.

I want to own it forever,

but it slips away

like water through my fingers.

The photograph is only a fragment

of something too vast to contain.

So I lower the camera,

step back,

and let the moment pass—

its beauty untouched,

held only in my soul,

alive in its evanescence,

here, now, nowhere else.

Not enough to claim it.

May want it deep down, ache for it in a quiet, avoidant way.
But can’t face the fear of stepping fully forward.

Offered something true without a match to meet.

Opened a frozen door and stayed present.

But…not enough to take emotional risk – be courageously vulnerable in the face of the unknown outcome.

What are we willing to do.

Not what doesn’t cost me control.

Keeping my walls intact while admiring you from afar is fear dressed in nostalgia.

Want to give love without hesitation, not the one that carries the ache of an offering that’s incomplete.

Want a love that doesn’t orbit forever, without restraint.

I was never too much.

You were never enough or maybe I was just too early.

And so, it begins or it ends.

The day I killed you from my mind,

You filled my time…accompanying my thoughts,

Then it became apparent your thoughts are elsewhere

But I stayed stuck,

Stuck on this feeling…

Not you

Just the illusion.

Never arrives with fanfare —
no drumbeat, no trumpet of change.
Sometimes, hope slips in
through the seams of a boring day.

It hides in the breath
between pause and reply,
before the next season
silently rewrites the air.

Hope never rushes.
It knows that time is not the enemy —
but the patient gardener
of what we dare to believe in again.

It waits relentlessly with you,
not for what once was,
but for what might still become
when the heart has found its home,
and the ache has folded
into wisdom.

So always have faith that the clock keeps ticking
not to remind you of what’s lost —
but to bring you closer to what finally will be.

Chasing this feeling.

It is permanently fleeting.

It is perpetually temporary.

The craving is unrelenting. It is constantly there.

It is what dreams are made of - if you have those dreams.

We passed each other over two decades,
not like strangers,
but like pages
from the same familiar torn book—
fluttering in opposite winds constantly.

You arrived
a season too early,
or maybe I bloomed too late.
We kept meeting in the middle
of almost everything, orbiting the same cities, same spaces.

There was a knowing—
 a catch,
like two lanterns
blinking once, always at the same time.
But then time,
time was not kind.

I had roads to conquer,
You had wounds to tend.
And though our shadows
brushed
as we moved through the same light,
we kept walking in different directions.

I always wonder
what would’ve grown
if I had lingered,
if I had turned towards you instead of away.
But even in passing,
you always left a warmth—
a reminder that you were worthy
but I couldn’t stay.
I just couldn’t see us in the same place.

Leading the Legacy

In the shadow of your guiding presence,

A strong legacy of optimism,

An attitude of forever abundance,

With your gentle laugh but stern wisdom,

You shaped our world and brought our future.

Now you’ve passed, the torch to me,

To lead with conviction and ample abundance,

The values of humility you instilled so deeply,

In my heart, forever keep.

Each decision, each step I take,

It is for the legacy, for your sake.

With honor, truth, and steadfast grace,

I strive to lead, to hold your place.

In moments of doubt, I feel your presence,

Assuring me,

Your pride, I seek - relentlessly

As I walk this path you paved,

With courage and unrelenting hope engraved,

Your spirit lives within my soul,

Your legacy is my guiding goal.

For in my heart, you’ll always be,

A beacon of kindness,

In the heavy legacy that I had no choice but to lead,

Your pride is what I forever seek.

Time, a consistent silent thief,
A ghost that dances on nostalgia,
It slips between our routine sighs,
And leaves its shadow in our eyes.

The moon remembers every glance,
In all its phases like a slow dance,
Yet even stars must fade and die,
And roses bow their heads and cry.

You glanced at me and the world stood still,
A trembling hush upon a upward hill.
But clocks resumed, and large shadows grew,
Their ever long lament between us two.

Melancholy wears your name,
Etched in hours I cannot ever, ever tame.
The catchy song is in tones of dusk and rain,
A song of longing sneakily dressed in pain.

Still, I would trade the light of day
To hear your heartbeat fade away —
Not into silence, but into sweet rhyme,
Where love always survives the end of time.

So love me now, and love me slow,
Before the heavy winds of winter blow.
For though the night may claim our fragile skin,
I always let time fall helpless within.

No rushing just to race for the sake of it,
but there’s this space, this certain place—
a very specific space only you can occupy,
a physical space where you finally belong.

Longing for quiet contentment,
a voice that knows just when to stay,
a kind of laugh that folds and bends
around the edges of an ordinary day—
and complements mine.

In between the fairy tale and the grandiose forever,
there is this place where you simply belong
with your person.

They say it comes when least you seek,
but that’s when you become the most hardened.
Still—
hope exists, in ache,
in always half a song.

Building is not the same as dreaming,
just like a match
is not the same as the flame.

To walk beside,
to share ambitions,
to sleep well.

Be open, ready, real, and true—
never chase to fill a greed,
but wait, softly.

It didn’t come when I wished it—

It didn’t come when I called it,
the stars couldn’t align in time,
the miles between us felt unkind and unfair.

It came quietly, in between time zones,
in voice notes at dusk and dawn,
in the way your voice softened me.

We didn’t begin in the usual way—
no coffee dates or sudden glances—
just words stretching across oceans,
and hearts adjusting to absence.

You arrived not too early,
to catch me not ready,

I pushed you too early,

Then you were too late.

You came when I had learned
to sit inside silence without folding,
when longing no longer ached.

And still, we are bonded
by something sweeter than time—
the possibility of us,
through months of maybe,
through maps that never aligned.

They say timing is everything,
but I think it’s the way you stayed—
despite the delay, despite the distance—
that made this connection feel
exactly on time.

I wake with to-do lists,
a dawn already overdue.
The coffee cools,
the school lunch is packed—
my precious morning flies.
Time slips past, aloof, askew.

The clock is a petty thief;
it trims my day.
I lunge at quiet moments of peace,
cling to the fleeting seconds
that slip like threads through my grip.

“Every day is the rest of our lives.”
But what if the future comes too early,
omitting the past,
too keen to feel the present?

To breathe in hours,
feel the minutes,
and appreciate the seconds
with each sunset.

The sun is there,
as always promised,
and then—
it disappears.
Because forever
is not promised.

We met, once, almost.
It felt like a breath too late,
a glance kind-of misread,
a yes that came
just after my no.

We lived parallel lives—
your laughter trailing down streets
I would walk the next day and also laugh,
your voice echoing in rooms
I’d just left behind within hours.

Somewhere, a door
kept sliding shut
just as one opened—
like fate had a sense of humor
and timing
it never quite mastered for us.

We had the same taste in music,
knew the same songs, read the same lines,
loved the same cities
but never at the same time.
I left as you arrived,
chasing me but never reaching me.

There were versions of us I obsessed on,
we were perfect, and I know—
in some softer universe
where we could get on the same train,
and if timing was kind we would have had a chance.

But in this one story,
we were two sylos,
told in syncopation—
rhythms off by a beat,
hearts misfiring
at the edge of maybe, maybe.

Still, sometimes I recant the echo
of what could have been—
not as a wound,
but as a whisper
that sometimes
love exists
in the almosts too, almost.

I miss you,
but you’re right here.
I miss who you sold me you could be
I miss that future you talked about,

My eyes still find you,
but they don’t see.
My hands still move,
but not toward you.
And your words—
they land like dust
on spaces we no longer inhabit.

You smile,
but it's practiced.
You stay,
but not truly because you know I’m gone.
And I sit beside the ghost
of what we used to be,
what we promised each other, speaking to the silence
that now wears our union.

The loneliest kind of missing—
not when someone’s gone forever,
but when they're fading
right in front of you,
unable to capture their potential, like ink in rain,
like stars at dawn.

I continue to reach for you, the version of you I want,
in invisible ways—
in pauses,
in half-laughed jokes.

But you're already on the other side
of something I can’t comprehend,
leaving me
with the strange ache
of missing someone who's here
and is yet to leave.