This is Letters from the Quiet Half.
Today’s episode is a conversation... real... imagined... both... between two people who met with hope… but arrived with different speeds.
It always starts the same way. A spark. A glance. A message that lingers longer than it should.
She laughs. She listens. She gets me. In my mind, I already know how this plays out. Coffee. Books. Laughter echoing across balconies we haven’t built yet.
I show her the future as I see it. Not to trap her. To invite her. To say: Look. This is how good it could be.
You’re lovely. That’s the problem.
You show me your heart so quickly, so fully, it fills the room before I’ve even stepped in.
And I do like you. Truly. But I’m still figuring out where I stand. Where you stand. Where we stand—if anywhere.
And your dream... it's beautiful. But it's not mine. Not yet.
I didn’t mean to overwhelm. I just got excited. You mirrored back so much of me that I thought maybe we were the same song.
But I wasn’t a song, I was a mirror. Reflecting what you HOPED for, not what I was READY for.
You fell in love with a future. I was still walking through the present.
I wanted to show you the shape of my affection. That it’s not tentative. That when I love, it’s whole, and loud, and real.
But maybe what you needed was not a man with a map but someone willing to walk beside you, without needing to know the destination.
That’s it. That’s exactly it. I want to walk. Slowly. With space between the steps.
I want to learn your silences before your sonnets. To see how you handle stillness before momentum.
I don’t want to be swept away.
I want to be chosen, deliberately. Not by a man who sees me as a fantasy, but by a man who sees me as a woman with both feet on the ground.
Then let me stay grounded. Let me try again. Not with poetry. Not with castles. But with coffee. And questions. And quiet presence.
That... I can do.
Ask your questions. And let me answer slowly. Because if this becomes something real, it won’t be because we rushed it.
It will be because we grew it.
The lesson I need to learn: Don’t fall in love with a mirror. Don’t run from a heart that needs more time.
Meet me in the middle. And we’ll see what we can become.
This has been Letters from the Quiet Half—a duet for anyone who’s ever felt too much too soon—or not soon enough.
You can find more episodes at quiethalf.substack.com.
And if you’d like to share this with someone who needs it—do.
Because maybe they’re not rejecting you. Maybe they’re just asking, Love me slowly, please.
