…of ambiguous love

You stand before me, the look in your eyes familiar
everything about us has now become ambiguous
the way your eyes linger for a moment too long
the way your smile arrives like the rising sun
then quietly vanishes like mist
I live in the space between what is spoken
and what seems to remain unsaid
trying to interpret every sudden silence
I have become a scholar of your contradictions
I study your pauses, I catalogue your hesitations
I search your words for hidden meanings
for some days you feel impossibly close
and the world softens as hope unfurls itself
then suddenly you are elsewhere
a distant shore, a shining star
visible only from certain angles
and once again I am left wondering
whether I imagined the warmth
that it was never there at all
this is the cruelty of ambiguous love
not rejection, not acceptance, only endless possibilities
a door that never fully opens and never fully closes
a story forever suspended between chapters
yet despite the uncertainty
despite the exhaustion of never knowing where I stand
I will not walk away, because somewhere
deep within all the ambiguity
there exists a fragile, shimmering thing
that to me, feels suspiciously like hope
©Ann Bagnall