maybe we get married one day, but who knows?

Sometimes I think about you the way I think about distant cities I’ve never been to. The way I think about Birmingham, or London, or Switzerland — places that exist somewhere far away in the world yet somehow live quietly inside my imagination. Places I’ve never walked through, never breathed the air of, never watched the sunset over. And still, they carry a strange pull inside me. A kind of longing that feels both foolish and inevitable, like a quiet ache you can’t quite explain.

You feel like that sometimes. A distant place I’ve never truly explored, but one that my mind keeps wandering toward without permission.

We barely talked the last time we met. It was nothing remarkable — just a handful of words tossed lightly into the air between us like loose seeds. They should have disappeared into the ordinary noise of the day. But somehow they didn’t. Somehow they landed somewhere deep inside the soil of my mind, and now they keep growing into thoughts I didn’t plan to plant.

Now I catch myself wondering what it would feel like to sit beside you again. Not as strangers exchanging polite sentences, but as two people who aren’t pretending they aren’t afraid of wanting something.

I’ve spent years living inside my head, wandering its dim hallways like a ghost that refuses to move on. It’s a quiet place in there, but not a peaceful one. Just rooms filled with questions, doubts, and half-formed dreams that never quite find the courage to become real.

Somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that love is a foreign language I’ll never fully understand. Like a book written in symbols I can look at but never read. I watch other people speak it so easily — laughter, closeness, shared moments — while I stand on the outside wondering how it works.

I’ve also learned how to protect myself with quiet lies.

I tell myself I’m unlovable before anyone else gets the chance to disagree.

I tell myself I’m impossible to stay for, impossible to choose, impossible to be held without eventually being let go.

Fear has been my oldest companion. It sits beside me like a shadow, whispering that everything I want will slip through my fingers the moment I reach for it. That hope is dangerous. That longing is something best kept locked away.

And for a long time, I believed it.

But when I think of you, something shifts inside me.

Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just a small movement in the soul, like a curtain stirring in a room where the windows are closed and no wind should exist.

I don’t understand why.

You’re not a miracle. Not a prophecy. Not some perfect answer the universe placed carefully in my hands. You’re just someone I met briefly — someone whose presence felt natural in a way I didn’t notice until later, like a heartbeat you only become aware of when it suddenly skips.

Maybe that’s what unsettles me.

Maybe that’s why the thought of you stays.

Because how can someone I barely know feel like a possibility I’m almost brave enough to believe in?

Sometimes I try to imagine a future where I choose to stay instead of running. A future where I stop hiding behind distance and silence. A future where I allow someone to see the fragile, aching parts of me instead of pretending they don’t exist.

A future where I let someone love me without shrinking away from it.

And in that imagined future, sometimes you’re there.

Maybe sitting beside me in a quiet room filled with morning light. Maybe laughing over something small and ordinary. Maybe teaching me — without even trying — that love doesn’t always arrive like a storm.

Maybe it can arrive softly.

Maybe caring for someone doesn’t have to feel like stepping onto a battlefield.

But who knows?

I’m careful not to write your name too deeply into the story yet. I’m afraid of wanting too much, of hoping too soon. I’m afraid of building a life in my imagination that reality never intends to deliver.

I’m afraid of picturing rooms filled with warm light and slow mornings where you exist beside me — only to wake up and realize the whole thing was just another dream stitched together from loneliness and quiet wishful thinking.

Still… something in me wants to try.

Maybe, for you, I’ll open the door a little wider than I usually do. Maybe I’ll let the sunlight step inside without immediately bracing for the burn. Maybe I’ll stop wandering the endless corridors of my thoughts and finally step into whatever this strange, uncertain possibility might become.

Maybe you’re the one.

Maybe we get married one day.

Maybe we don’t.

Maybe everything falls apart.

Maybe everything falls into place.

But who knows?

Only time.

Only fate.

Only whatever gentle, mysterious force placed the thought of you into my chest in the first place.

Maybe our paths cross again in some unexpected season. Maybe in one of those distant cities I’ve never seen. Maybe somewhere ordinary. Maybe somewhere sacred. Maybe somewhere that quietly feels like a beginning.

Or maybe nothing happens at all.

But who knows?