The Only Name I Ever Whispered

Some people fall in love quietly. Others crash into it like an accident they never saw coming. I think I drowned.

It wasn’t even a beginning. That’s the strangest part. We never had a day we called ours. No anniversary. No first kiss under a moonlit sky. No picture that could sit in a wallet. Just... years of knowing, years of almosts. A million unfinished sentences between us. And still, she became the most permanent thing in my life.

I confessed once. Just once.

We were in the library. It was late, and the power had gone out, and the emergency lights cast a strange yellow hue on everything. She had her head down, reading something she wasn’t really reading. And I said it—softly, not looking at her, like a secret I was giving up to the room instead of her.

“I think I love you.”

She didn’t look up.

After a pause, she said, “You’ll find someone better.”

That was it.

Not cruel. Not kind. Just... careful. Like she was handling a fragile thing she didn’t ask to hold.

It became her line over the years.

You’ll find better.

Every time I showed up, every time I texted after weeks of silence, every time I offered a little more of myself, hoping maybe—just maybe—she’d catch it this time and not let it drop.

She never let me get too close.

But she never walked away either.

That was her cruelty.

That was her kindness.

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Not daily. But deeply.

I still wonder if she ever scrolls back to our chats and rereads the messages I never deleted.

I still wonder if she remembers that rainy evening when we almost kissed, and chose not to, because even silence can be an answer.

And even if she never walks through the door, it will stay open.

x

Everyone else said I was being foolish. That I deserved love that wasn’t so hesitant, so scared, so fragmented. And maybe they were right.

But what they didn’t understand is that I didn’t want anyone else. I wasn’t waiting for her to choose me. I had already chosen her, and that was enough. Loving her didn’t feel like something I was doing for a result. It was just a state of being.

I tried. I really did. I went on dates. I held other hands. I laughed in places where she wasn’t present. But even then, the silence between someone’s words would remind me of the way she used to pause before speaking, as if editing herself in real time. Even then, I’d accidentally call someone by her name—not out loud, but in my head.

She was the only name I ever whispered when I was drunk. The only memory that made me sit up in bed at 2:14 AM with no reason. The only person who could ruin my entire day by liking someone else’s post, even when I was trying not to care.

I became a quiet kind of loyal. Not the kind you parade, not the kind you write poems about. The kind where you look at someone across a room full of people and feel more than you ever did holding someone else’s hand.

She called me on a Thursday. Months after we’d last spoken. Said she was moving cities.

“I just thought you should know,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied, after a pause. “Maybe part of me wanted you to stop me.”

I didn’t stop her.

I didn’t beg.

I just said, “Take care.”

Because by then, I had learned something painful: sometimes love isn’t about what you get. It’s about what you’re willing to carry.

I still think about her.

And if she ever asks again:

"You still don’t want anyone else?"

I’ll still answer the same way:

“No. I don’t.”

Because I don’t love like a season. I love like a home.

Just in case.