Bouquets I’ll Never Send

There comes, I think, a strange kind of clarity in life — the mildly inconvenient kind you don’t earn intentionally, but stumble upon after a long season of misunderstanding yourself. And from that clarity grows a new, problematically precise longing for things you’re now convinced will finally make you happy. Meeting someone at that exact stage of your life — someone who seems to check all those freshly discovered boxes — is what I can only describe as a momentous disaster.

And in that aforementioned phase, where you have begrudgingly put on your big-boy pants, everything that could once pass off for attraction now feels embarrassingly childish. So you try to act accordingly. You promise yourself you won’t fall so carelessly again. You’ll keep things at a respectful, well-lit, friendship-only boundary.

But then the conversations run deeper. The hangouts run longer. And somewhere between the way they tell a story, the way they listen and the way their silences don’t feel empty — you become curious. You want to know more, and the more you learn, the more they begin to feel almost unreal. You try to distract yourself by focusing on their flaws, only to find yourself in real trouble when those, too, begin to feel strangely endearing.

You attempt to intellectualize this connection, refusing to degrade it by calling it a crush. But at some point — perhaps while replaying an unexpectedly tender conversation, or remembering the way they said something that stayed with you — you finally admit to yourself that you might just have a teeny tiny crush.

And yet, as this fog of attraction slowly clears, you start remembering the things that matter to them. Their ambitions. Their need for freedom. The stage of life they’re in. The things they’ve quietly fought for. And with that clarity, the only logical next step is to ask yourself the question you’ve been avoiding: where do you fit in all of this? Or do you fit at all?

In your naïveté, you may have imagined an entire life together — the kind with early morning coffees, long drives, shared routines, and a certain uncomplicated peace. You may have felt, in a way that startled you, that they might actually understand you. But eventually you realize that liking someone and belonging in their life are two very different things. You found them perfect for you — but were you ever perfect for them?

They matter to you. They mean something to you. And you care too deeply to risk burdening them with an ill-timed confession of this meaning that might derail the life they are carefully building. You know what season they are in — the battles they are fighting, the dreams they are shaping — and you refuse to be one more complication in a world already overflowing with them.

There may be a version of your life where you tell them everything — and maybe they smile, maybe they stay, maybe something beautiful begins. But in this version, the one you are actually living, you simply wish them well and carry the tenderness alone.

You catch a final, lingering glimpse of the colors that first drew you in. You realize you have meticulously collected all these moments, curating them precisely as one would assemble a bouquet. The Orchid was their love for simple things; the Lilies, their profound kindness; and the Roses, their unwavering commitment to self, despite the oppressive weight of existence. And as your final, most dignified act of affection, you hold the collection close and accept that the bouquet will remain unsent.

You’re glad you met them though. And even if nothing came out of it, some part of you will always lean gently in their direction — not as a hope, not as a claim, but as a reminder of how deeply and gracefully a heart can care without asking for anything in return.