"The Stranger I Like "

 SATVIK 

"Until someone openly says I LIKE YOU and I WANT US to be together. Take their kind gestures as them just being nice. We overanalyse a smile, replaying a compliment, thinking maybe this means something. But let's be real, unless someone genuinely says I LIKE YOU, it's just kindness. Not a hidden love story. And even if they like you but are unable to say it right now, they will surely say it one day if they feel for you that way."

I recently read these lines somewhere and they clung to me like the scent of first rain on parched earth — raw, grounding, painfully true.

Isn’t it odd how we lace ordinary moments with extraordinary hope?

Every time I told him, “You’re rare,” I meant it in the sincerest shade of admiration, not as a breadcrumb of flirtation, but as a celebration of his existence in a world so noise-cluttered with apathy. And when he said kind things about me, it wasn’t a hidden signal just a mirror reflecting honesty.

But the trouble with me? I over-wrap gifts of kindness in rose-tinted wrappers. I name every small warmth as a maybe. A delayed text makes me anxious. A voice note makes me euphoric. I forget that I, too, am worthy of love, not because someone notices, but because I simply am.

He's busy. Exhausted sometimes. Yet I ask him for voice notes and pictures. He often doesn't share still manages to send pictures sometimes. 

And silly me, I collect these fragments like fallen feathers from a bird that never promised to land.

He never gave me disappointment. I gifted it to myself.

Not because he failed me, but because I quietly scripted a story he never auditioned for.

It’s odd, right?

We haven’t built a castle of memories, but still, on days I’m drenched in silence, I text him three vulnerable words — I miss you.

Not expecting anything. Just hoping he hears me, somewhere behind his screen.

And even when he replies with just an emoji, I smile.

Because he didn’t vanish.

And in today’s world, staying even silently is a rare kind of grace.

My friend, a believer in logic and equations, says,

"Even a thousand, when multiplied by zero, gives zero. That’s how love works too. One-sided efforts always fall into void."

But if this bond was really zero, why do my emotions still grow?

Why does his name feel like a familiar echo in a place I've never been?

Maybe...

Maybe we’ve danced once in a time not written.

In a lifetime not recorded.

And maybe that's why I ache for someone I’ve never really had.

I don't chase a confession anymore.

I chase peace.

A soul who doesn’t need to say "I love you" just to prove it.

I long for a gaze that holds me whole — not one that undresses me, but one that unknots me.

A heart that doesn’t just make memories, but keeps them like letters folded under pillows.

Still, I fear closeness.

Maybe that’s why I admire him from this poetic distance — his standards sky-kissed, and me, a stargazer with ink-stained fingers.

I don’t want to lose him to the category of lesson learned.

So I stay away.

Because every time I write for him, I make him mine not in reality, but in the kingdom of metaphors I live in.

There’s a quiet kind of joy in knowing him, the kind that doesn’t shout in the daylight but sighs gently in the corners of my heart. We were never a love story, not even close, but he gave me something more honest than most lovers do: he never lied to my feelings. 

In a world where affection is often a transaction, where people borrow emotions to escape their loneliness, he never once used mine as a convenience. He never served me sugarcoated hopes wrapped in illusions of “forever.” He didn’t come close just to taste warmth and leave once he was full. He stayed exactly where he was - distant, yes, but never cruel.

He didn’t offer empty words or half-baked promises, and in doing so, he gave me something rare: clarity wrapped in kindness.

He knew what I felt. Maybe he always did, how my eyes softened when his name crossed my mind, how the silence between us was never truly empty for me. But even knowing all that, he didn’t flinch, didn’t mock, didn’t treat it like a weakness to laugh at or pity. He carried the weight of my unspoken truths with a grace I hadn’t known people were capable of. Where others would’ve built a ladder out of my affection only to climb over me and walk away, he stood still. He didn’t use me to feel powerful, didn’t test how far I’d go before I broke. He didn’t come to me only when boredom knocked or when life turned quiet. He never played the ‘let’s be close until I find better’ game. And that, in today’s world, feels almost sacred.

 I’ve watched many, who fall for attention dressed as care. I’ve seen hearts being opened like windows only to be shut when the weather changes. But he? He made me feel safe even from a distance. He didn’t offer a place in his life, but he never made me feel out of place either. He may never look at me the way I once hoped, but he didn’t look away when I silently adored him. And that matters more than anyone knows. Because it’s easy to love someone who stays, what’s rare is to admire someone who doesn’t stay, but still never leaves you hurt.

He didn’t come into my life to be mine. He came like a passing breeze that didn’t stay, but somehow cleared the dust I’d been carrying. Maybe I’ll never confess. Maybe I’ll always love him quietly, from behind the curtain of reality. But even in that silence, I feel lucky. Because where feelings are used like matches, struck once and discarded. I had someone who held mine like a candle, even if he couldn’t keep it burning. He didn’t feed my illusions, didn’t toy with my tenderness. And for that, he’ll always be a soft corner in my story.