We stood in the kitchen, brittle quiet hanging over the countertops, her hands tracing circles on the laminate as if polishing a bruise she couldn’t name
I tried to swallow the tension, but it hit the nerves in my jaw, that old tremor of wanting one future while she clung to another like a shield she couldn’t lower
She said a child would drown her, said her lungs already fought for space, said the world scraped too hard for her to risk splitting herself open just to raise another fragile thing inside the wreck
I stared at the knife block pretending it steadied me, pretending the word father didn’t scorch through me every time someone joked about legacy or bloodlines or what a man leaves behind
She wasn’t cruel; she was tired, and terror makes its home in the tired, burrowing deep until even love feels like a bargaining table stacked with penalties
I told her I’d wait, but waiting stretched thin, the kind of thin that snaps with a whisper, not a roar
We slept back-to-back that night, her spine a wall I once worshipped, now a border crossing I didn’t have the visa for
[Chorus]
We’re stitched together by want and wound, held tight by threads we fray
Your future builds a shelter while mine begs for another day
We love in different languages that neither of us can say
And every dream we craft together drifts a little further away
The morning came in grey like a photograph of regret, light filtered through blinds she’d chosen for a room she wanted kept small
I heard her breathing change, that half-awake panic where the body remembers what the mind tried to file away
She rolled toward me once, just once, and her eyes were glassy, like windows fogged from the inside
In my chest the wanting hummed, a dull machine that wouldn’t idle, and I hated it for being so loud when she needed silence
I thought about my father’s hands, big and rough and always reaching for mine, and I ached for that, ached to be that, ached for the sound of someone calling me by a name I hadn’t earned yet
She must have felt the shift, the way sadness has its own gravity, because she touched my wrist, featherlight, like testing whether glass would hold
We didn’t speak–just breathed in tandem, two ghosts rehearsing lullabies for children who never arrive
I pictured a small hand gripping mine, imagined the weight of responsibility like a star lodged in my ribs, heavy but luminous
And then I pictured her face–drawn, cornered, unraveling at the thought–and guilt surged, acidic and sharp, because wanting something she feared felt like treason dressed as hope
We tried again in the morning, voices hushed, each word chosen like stepping across thin ice
She said she loved me, said she wished she wanted what I did, said she hated herself for failing at a dream she never had
I said nothing worth keeping, just traced circles on my coffee cup like she had on the counter, mirroring grief without knowing how to dismantle it
The distance in the room thickened until it felt like a third presence, something uninvited, something that fed on dilemmas too personal to name without bleeding
I kissed her forehead knowing it wasn’t a repair, just a temporary ceasefire, a way to hold the fragile place between her nightmares and my longing
Her shoulders shook, not from fear of me, but from fear of losing herself in a future that didn’t fit her shape
And mine shook too, from the fear that desire this deep might be the wedge that splits us clean
[Chorus]
We’re stitched together by want and wound, held tight by threads we fray
Your future builds a shelter while mine begs for another day
We love in different languages that neither of us can say
And every dream we craft together drifts a little further away