It always begins with a feeling. Fleeting and uncertain, it arrives unannounced, a quiet tremor beneath the surface of an otherwise unremarkable moment. Excitement, disbelief, indifference—all indistinguishable at first, like brushstrokes not yet forming a picture. And then, action gives it shape. Kindness, sincerity, care—verbs that press upon the intangible, forming something that feels real. Love, though immeasurable, becomes present through gestures, through words, through the quiet spaces between them.
But what is built with such gentle precision is just as easily undone. Distance, loneliness—absences that stretch like shadows over everything once bright. And with that void comes forgoing, a slow unraveling of something once whole. Sweetness sours, nourishment curdles into poison. The warmth that once sustained begins to burn, until the fire, spent and exhausted, leaves behind only coal—black, cold, and unyielding.
