Don’t Say It

I won’t say I love you,
but I feel it
in the quiet between us
when our gazes touch
Soft as a breath,
silent as retreat
 
Lingering talks on the patio
around the table I thrifted
Your dark green American Spirits
and a half pint of Jameson
sweating harder
than the words we don’t say
 
In the silence under the stars
my mind wanders to
the cage I called marriage
I can’t shed this second skin of regret
though they called me serpent
for slipping out of ceremony
 
I avoid our home
You sit in the dark behind blinds half-drawn,
moonlight stroking your face
the way you wish I would
Loneliness spoiling like milk,
but never curdling into bitterness
 
I tell myself
I don’t want commitment
So I chase strangers,
their touch fumbling at
the lock behind my ribs
haphazardly welded shut
 
It never works
I wake up in borrowed sheets
missing the weight
of your arms,
pretending not to crave
the warmth I swore off
 
I want
to want you
without needing you
I won’t gorge on hope
just to choke
on its sugared husks
 
But amidst all the anxiety
the overthinking
the distance
you stay sturdy
The cliff I shatter against
when the sea spits me out
 
But you never move,
never will
You promised,
that night on the patio
Your smoke twining through my hair
when your hands were too afraid
 
Don’t say you love me,
because love
named aloud
is the ghost I can’t shake
since I fled from
my faux altar of eternity
 
Love me without words
Care without claiming
I dress us up casually,
but stitched into our lining
are the threads
that make you my lifeline