Gold and Ember

I am madly falling for your eyes.

Not gently. Not safely. Not in the kind of way that lets a person keep their dignity, their peace, their name untouched. I am falling into them like something already surrendered, like my soul leaned too close to the edge and never tried to save itself. There is a depth in them I cannot explain without sounding ruined. A deep golden-brown universe, quiet and endless, hiding behind your gaze as if the sun itself got tired of burning in the sky and chose to live inside you instead.

And God, I want to be the first one who sees it.

I want to be the first one who looks long enough to find the places in you no one else has named. The soft shadows. The secret warmth. The hidden storms you keep buried beneath all that light. Your eyes do not simply look at the world. They hold it. They swallow it. They turn every ordinary thing into something sacred, something dangerous, something I suddenly want to kneel before. Like autumn leaves, they are slowly coloring my soul in gold, staining every quiet part of me with a tenderness I did not ask for and cannot escape.

Every time you smile, I lose some part of my humanity.

It is embarrassing, really, how quickly I become less of myself in your presence. How my thoughts scatter. How my breath forgets its rhythm. How something ancient inside me wakes up and reaches for you before I can stop it. You smile, and there is a small death in me. Not the kind that ends a life, but the kind that ends control. The kind that takes the version of me who was reasonable, careful, untouched, and leaves behind someone softer. Someone hungrier. Someone who would follow the sound of your voice into ruin and still call it grace.

When you look at me, the world stops spinning.

Time stops moving. Noise folds into silence. The room disappears, the people disappear, the distance disappears, and there is nothing left but you. Only you. Your face. Your mouth. Your eyes finding mine, even for a second, even by accident, even in a way that might mean nothing to you and everything to me. And in that single second, I become unbearable to myself. I feel too much. I want too much. I start believing in impossible things, in signs, in fate, in all the stupid little miracles the heart invents when it cannot survive the truth.

I know I should stop this.

I know I should gather whatever is left of my pride and walk away from the fire before I mistake burning for being chosen. I know I should let this longing rot quietly inside me instead of feeding it with every glance, every memory, every imagined softness in your voice. I know I should look away. I know I should teach my heart that not every beautiful thing is meant to be touched. But God has already damned me to keep reaching for you. To keep searching for you everywhere I go. In every face I pass. In every voice I hear. In every shadow that almost carries your shape.

I look for you even when I know you are not there.

That is the worst part. You have become a haunting without even trying. I find you in the gold of evening light, in the quiet after music ends, in the moon when it hangs too lonely above the world. I find you in strangers, and then hate them for not being you. I find you in perfumes that disappear too quickly, in laughter from another room, in every beautiful thing that makes my chest tighten before I understand why. You have become the language my longing speaks when I am too tired to pray.

And your perfume, God, your perfume.

It is cruel how something so small can undo me. How a trace of you in the air can turn my body into memory. How it pulls me under before I can remind myself to breathe. I want to drown in it. I want to be ruined by the smallest proof that you were near. I want to close my eyes and let the ghost of you surround me until I forget where I end and where my hunger for you begins. There are moments when I think I could survive anything, except being close enough to feel you and still not being allowed to belong to you.

I long for your smile like winter longs for fire.

I yearn for that sparkle in your eyes, the one that appears when you look at the moon, at the stars, at something far away and beautiful. I wonder if you know what happens to me when that light touches your face. I wonder if you understand that I watch you become softer in those moments, almost unreachable, almost divine. And then I wonder if you have ever looked at me that way. Even once. Even briefly. Even without realizing it. Have I ever been a star in your sky, or am I only a shadow standing beneath it, begging to be noticed?

Do you even look at me?

Do you even happen to glance in my direction, or have I built an entire universe from accidents? Have I mistaken politeness for softness? Coincidence for destiny? A passing look for a secret confession? Tell me, because I no longer trust myself. I no longer know where reality ends and my longing begins. Your eyes have made a dreamer out of me, and now I am trapped between what is real and what I ache to believe. I keep replaying every moment, every glance, every almost-smile, searching for proof that I am not the only one drowning here.

Oh God, please.

Just say you are already looking at me.

Say I am not mad for feeling this. Say I did not imagine the pull between us. Say your soul recognized mine before either of us had the courage to admit it. Say there is some hidden corner of you where my name already lives. Say that when your eyes search the room, they are not searching for anyone. They are searching for me. Say it, even if it destroys me. Say it, even if it gives me something I will never be able to forget.

Because I would color the whole world in gold and ember for you.

I would take every dull, lifeless thing and make it burn again. I would gather the autumn from every dying tree and lay it at your feet. I would turn the sky softer for you, make the moon brighter, teach the stars your name. I would make beauty out of ruin if only you asked me to. I would pour warmth into every cold place that ever touched you. I would love you in colors no one has invented yet, in shades of gold so deep they would look like prayer, in embers so bright they would look like sin.

Do you even know I already belong to you?

Not in the simple way people say they belong to someone. Not sweetly. Not lightly. I mean there is a part of me that has already crossed the distance between us and never came back. There is a part of me that stands beside you in every room, silent and devoted, waiting for you to notice. I carry you in places you have never touched. You are in my thoughts before I can defend myself. You are in my chest like a second heartbeat. You are in the quiet, in the ache, in the almost, in the never enough.

And I hate how beautiful it feels.

I hate that wanting you has become both my punishment and my comfort. I hate that I can suffer from you and still crave you like mercy. I hate that one look from you could undo all the strength I have spent years pretending to have. I hate that I would forgive the pain if it came from your hands. I hate that I would follow your voice even if it led me somewhere dark. I hate that every part of me knows better, and still, every part of me turns toward you.

So close your eyes.

Just close them for a moment and see me there.

See me already standing in the quiet place behind your heart, waiting as if I have always belonged there. See me with my hands full of gold and ember, with my soul trembling, with all my carefulness gone. See me not as a passing shadow, not as someone who looked at you too long from across the room, but as the one who saw the universe hidden in your eyes and wanted to stay. The one who would follow you through every season, through every darkness, through every impossible road.

Because I think I was already yours before I knew your name.

And maybe that is the most dangerous truth of all.