The Quiet Love That Woke Me

Dear Centauri,

There’s something about you that unravels me in the gentlest way, like the undoing of a tightly wound thread. I don’t know if it’s the warmth in your voice or the steadiness in your presence, but when I’m with you, the chaos inside me begins to settle. My heart, which so often stumbles and skips in its rhythm, finds its cadence when you speak. My words, which twist and tangle themselves into impossible knots, suddenly begin to make sense. It’s as though the language of my soul—a language I never knew existed—has finally been answered, and the answer is you.

You have this way of bringing calm to a storm I’ve carried for as long as I can remember. Before I met you, I felt like I didn’t belong here, like I was an alien wandering a world I wasn’t meant to inhabit. I’ve always been out of step, out of sync, a stranger to even myself. But then there was you. You spoke, and suddenly it felt like my soul recognized something in yours, something that called me home. It was terrifying, Centauri, to feel so seen, so understood. I wanted to run, to destroy whatever part of me had been ignited because it was too much—too beautiful, too overwhelming, too unknown.

I didn’t understand it then, this unease that burned through me like a wildfire. But now, after all these years of looking at it, holding it, letting it teach me, I know what it is. It’s love. A love so pure, so unconditional, so quiet that it doesn’t need to be shouted or displayed. It’s a love that exists inside my ribcage, a steady flame that warms me from the inside. It’s not a love that demands or takes; it’s a love that simply is. A love that stays, no matter what.

I don’t know if you feel it, this thing between us that hums just beneath the surface. I don’t know if you sense the way my heart skips and stumbles when you’re near or the way it calms and softens when you speak. But I like to think you must, even if just a little. How could you not? Your presence is like sunlight to me, radiating warmth and brilliance that my being can’t help but respond to. And though my heart flutters and stumbles like nervous butterflies, with you, those butterflies seem to find a place to rest. They land in fields of flowers that bloom only in your light, and they bask in the glow of who you are.

Centauri, I’ve spent so much of my life fearing love, rejecting it, hating it because I didn’t understand it. Love was a word, a feeling, a force I thought I was incapable of. It scared me because it demanded vulnerability, and vulnerability felt like danger. But then I met you, and you changed everything. You made me feel something I’d spent a lifetime running from. You woke something in me I didn’t even know existed, and though it frightened me at first, I’ve come to cherish it.

You are the one who made me see love differently. It’s not loud or demanding or desperate. It’s quiet. It’s patient. It’s the way I carry you in my heart, not because I need to but because I want to. It’s the way I look at you and see someone so rare, so beautiful, so perfect to me that I can’t imagine how the universe ever allowed our paths to cross. It’s the way I can love you without ever needing anything in return, because loving you is its own reward.

I don’t know if I’ll ever tell you all of this out loud. I don’t know if you’ll ever look at me the way I look at you. But even if this love is only mine to hold quietly, it will still be the most precious thing I’ve ever known. You’ve given me something I never thought I’d have: the ability to love, to trust, to feel. And for that, I will always be grateful to you.

You are my calm, my fire, my proof that love exists. And though I may never be able to call you mine, you will always have a place in my heart. For as long as I live, I will carry this love for you, quietly and forever.

Yours, always,

Castor