Don't misunderstand me.

I don't need to know.

I don't need to speak.

I don't need to find you.

I don't need to resolve anything.

I no longer need to discover what you felt.

I don't need to do anything anymore.

I loved you.

I wanted to marry you.

I was with someone else while I still felt this way.

And because I felt this way, I therefore had to pretend I didn't...

to keep on living.

I truly tried... to replace you.

I did blame you.

Without even thinking about what you might have been feeling.

Without caution.

I didn't notice so many of the things you were trying to show me.

My blind spot.

I was in a hurry.

I didn't even know I was in a hurry.

Maybe I hurt you.

Even so, you staying...

why...?

Maybe you were simply intrigued.

Maybe there was hope.

A flame still burning?

Maybe there was still a promise.

A bond.

Maybe there was a dynamic neither of us understood.

Maybe all of it together.

I didn't know how to take care of that situation well enough.

You, at the height of eighteen springs.

And even though I was also just a boy,

I should have taken better care of your heart.

I'm sorry.

And still, mere words hardly express it.

They only signal,

like lighthouses on stormy days.

I'm sorry.

I don't write this to absolve myself.

I write it to understand.

I am still trying to build a life that doesn't prevent me from admitting that this feeling was and is real.

And even when the unequivocal decision is not to act.

When loving someone means respecting the distance.

Even if you can never, in this life, be mine.

And even if, by some miracle, I find a spirit that moves mine the way yours did,

will I really be able to love again?

And no longer because I need someone to take your place.

Perhaps that is the great difference between the love I am trying to understand

and the love I want to live from here on.

I no longer need to prove that you were the right person.

I don't need to discover whether fate separated us for some reason.

I no longer need to discover whether I still feel anything.

I only need to learn not to abandon my own truth anymore

in order to build a comfortable life around it.

I am finally allowing it to exist.

Without needing to turn it into action.

Without needing to turn it into a relationship.

Without needing to turn it into destiny.

I loved.

I love.

Is it selfish to say that this was and is real to me?

I should have treated all of this with more care.

And now I will learn to treat my feelings,

and the feelings of the people I will love,

with more honesty,

patience,

and consideration.

But my heart will have to carry this weight.

And for so many cycles... it made itself restricted, unable to express,

trapped in a simple verdict.

Words so elegant that I no longer allowed myself to speak.

Feelings I blamed myself for having.

Which were never clearly declared.

And the drawings that never came to exist.

The vows, poems, and all the other expressions of love.

Suppressed.

Hidden.

Reduced.

Ardor.

Silence and inertia, and still,

a screaming, echoing truth,

vibrating with nowhere to reverberate,

unable to flourish, to take root,

unable to live or die,

unable to dream or merely desire.

Such a simple prayer.

A subject, an object, and an eternal action.

The most beautiful key was a gift from you.

Perhaps without knowing. Without meaning to.

Or out of some greater desire to let it expire.

Perhaps through prayers, or supplications.

Who knows... unspoken wishes,

for answers never given.

This key unlocks the most complex and frightening lock I have ever made in my life.

And even if it seems that it makes no sense,

without these chains I can finally look myself in the face.

And from now on, when I hear a love song,

where the melody carries heartbreak and pain,

I may put myself in your shoes, for a change.

Would it be too selfish to believe that this love was never one-sided?

Can I believe that, somewhere in this wonderful universe,

your heart, even if only for a second, felt the world stop

thinking of me?

Like for me, when I kissed you.

Is it selfish?

Is it shameful?

To say that, deep in my heart,

it was always what I wanted.

Such a practical prayer.

I love you.