You arrived quietly—
not through my front door,
but through the crack
between curiosity and loneliness.
I never handed you the keys.
Yet somehow,
you moved into my thoughts,
rearranged the furniture,
painted the walls your favourite colour,
and convinced my heart
to start paying rent.
Now every silence
wears your voice.
Every notification
pretends to be you.
I have memorised
the mathematics of your replies;
how three minutes means busy,
twelve means uncertain,
and twenty...
twenty means I've begun
inventing stories
that never happened.
I read between commas,
searched for affection
hidden inside full stops,
mistook delayed replies
for carefully crafted messages
that only existed
inside my own mind.
Love,
they tell me,
is patient.
But this isn't love.
Love breathes.
This suffocates.
Love gives.
This takes.
Love is a home.
This is a prison
that somehow convinced me
I was free.
You have become
a country
I visit every hour
without ever leaving my room.
My happiness
clocks in
with your attention
and clocks out
with your absence.
The weather inside me
depends entirely
on whether your name
lights up my screen.
How frightening it is
to discover
that another human being
can accidentally
become the landlord
of your peace.
Every morning,
I evict you.
Every night,
you return,
carrying flowers
that only I can see.
The cruelest part?
You have no idea
you live here.
You don't know
that I've memorised
the sound of your name
without ever saying it aloud.
You don't know
that I've built futures
from conversations
that never happened.
You don't know
that I've mistaken possibility
for promise.
Somewhere
between hoping
and hallucinating,
admiration
became imprisonment.
And hope—
hope laid the first brick.
It whispered,
"Maybe tomorrow."
Tomorrow became weeks.
Weeks became months.
And the walls grew higher.
Until I could no longer tell
whether I wanted you...
or simply wanted
to be free of wanting you.
Perhaps that is what limerence is.
Not love.
Not obsession.
But a house
built by hope,
occupied by fantasy,
and mistaken
for home.
I don't want you.
I want release.
Because the cruelest prisons
are never built by another person.
They're built by hope,
locked from the inside,
and guarded
by a version of someone
who never truly existed.
227
