They sit behind their balanced books and measured boundaries, saying nothing, holding the other end of a silence that was heavy enough to kill.
They ask, “Wouldn’t a text have done?” As if a blue light on a screen could ever pull a soul out of a collapse. As if devotion has a spending cap.
They don’t get it. They think friendship is a fair-weather contract, a set of clean handshakes, brunch on Sundays, a casual “let me know if you need anything” that secretly prays you never call.
But when you’ve seen someone’s shadows, when you’ve held the pieces of their life while they bled through the cracks, you realize allegiance isn’t a neat little hedge. It’s a wild, unmapped terrain.
I would cross oceans on a sinking raft. I would give up the last scrap of my own warmth to make sure their winter doesn’t freeze them solid. I would ruin my own sleep, my own knees, my own comfort, because when the world strips them down to nothing, I am the wall that stands between them and the wind.
Call it reckless. Call it codependent. Call it crazy. They use big, cautious words because they’re terrified of a bond that costs them something. They live in the shallow end, measuring every splash, wondering why we’re out in the deep water, drowning for each other— and coming back up, breath by breath, together.
They will never understand the length of the road. Because they’ve never cared for someone enough to walk it all the way to the end.