By :Thobejane Mantepu Victoria
You’re my coffee before the world wakes, steady and warm,
Your hoodie finds my shoulders before I ask.
Best friend, you say I bite back a smile,
Loving you in ways that make friendship fragile.
When my voice shakes, you don’t try to fix,
You just stay, and pull me closer in the quiet.
Friends shouldn’t feel like fire in their fingertips,
But your hand on mine keeps setting me alight.
We dodge the word ‘love’ like it’s a live wire,
Yet you memorize the maps of all my moods.
You kiss my forehead when the night gets heavy,
And call it “keeping watch”I call it being yours.
You see the girl before the brave, before the mask,
Love me without asking, without making me ask.
If this isn’t love, tell me what we should name
The way we move like one flame.
We trace the line between ‘almost’ and ‘always’,
Your laugh against my ear, a dangerous kind of home.
You swear we’re just friends, lips grazing my temple,
And I let you lie, because the truth tastes like honey.
So we stay here, in this soft, reckless in-between,
Where your arms are my favorite kind of sin
No labels, no promises we dare to keep
Just you, loving me, and me, loving you in my sleep.