Between Bruises & Blooms

You came in quietly—

not like a storm,
not like the kind of love
I have learned to fear,

but like warm light
under a closed door.

Something small.
Something gentle.
Something I could ignore
if I really wanted to.

Except I don’t.

Because somehow
you have me smiling
at a glowing screen
like I am sixteen again,

reading certain words twice,
hearing your voice
long after the call ends,
letting one soft darlin’
settle somewhere dangerous
beneath my ribs.

And maybe that is the part
that scares me—

how easy this feels.

How you can speak
to the little pieces of my world
without making it seem
like a burden.

How conversation stretches
past the hour
without either of us
reaching for the door.

I know myself.

I know how quickly
my heart starts building homes
inside people
who have only just
opened a window.

So I keep telling it—

slow down.

Do not name this yet.
Do not turn a spark
into a constellation.
Do not mistake tenderness
for forever.

But still,

there is something blooming here.

Small.
Unclaimed.
Barely brave enough
to break the soil.

And for once,
I don’t want to pull it up
just because I am afraid
of what it might become.