This article was written by a student who isn’t a member of the Journalism team, however they won our HHS Hawk Love Writing Competition, where one of the prizes was their work being published.

Four letters, one syllable. The little boy I babysat would say it all the time. Everyone can pronounce this word, say this word- but to mean it? “Awh I love you too!” The words left my lips easily, but as I watched the youth toss them around so carelessly, I found myself wondering. Why is it that as we grow older, we hear them less? 

Last Valentine’s day I gave love away freely, wrapping it in laughter, in gestures, in the warmth of familiarity. My mother got an I love you. Close friends received one -even my dogs. But when it came to offer it to the one person who mattered most, the words turned to stone on my tongue. I had whispered it to him before, in the silence between our worlds, where only I could hear. But when his eyes met mine, something inside of me froze. How could he love me? 

How could I hand him something so fragile, knowing he might never hold it with the same care? In that moment, everything we had been-every conversation, every fleeting touch of understanding-felt like a distant dream. We were simply strangers now. I pressed my lips together, swallowed the truth whole, and let the moment pass. We had always been good at speaking without saying anything at all. He told me how he liked my blonde, straight hair. I told him he looked good in red. We exchanged pieces of ourselves like borrowed books, careful not to take too much. I told him about the sport I’d loved since I was five. He listened, maybe even cared. But love? Love was the one thing we never spoke of. And yet, I stood, chocolates in hand, trembling like a child afraid of the dark. He wasn’t little anymore, and neither was I- but he still made me forget how to breathe.

 As soon as he turned away, my voice returned. But by then, it was too late. I would have done anything for him-I still would. I walked home that day, listening to the echoes of laughter, of other people saying the word I couldn’t. I kept turning around, hoping, foolishly, that he would say it back. Just once. I love you. I tell him everyday in silence, but he never hears it. He doesn’t know the way home. And when my boyfriend stood before me, offering me something steady, something real, I was the one who turned away this time. I didn’t love the boy who called me his. Instead, I loved the man who never did. One loved me. I loved the other. And I didn’t care. Because my heart had never been mine to give-it had belonged to him from the start. 

We all want what we cannot have. I wanted him. He wanted peace. I couldn’t leave him alone, and he couldn’t find the green in my eyes. But the next day, when I saw him again, his smile hugged me where his arms never would. And I knew-this was my fault. My fault that he never knew. My fault that I will spend a lifetime turning away from every other person on this earth but him. Months later, when I held the pencil and it came time to write the word in lead, my hand trembled. The letters blurred, spinning out of control. It didn’t know what it was doing. Neither did I. Maybe we never do. Maybe love isn’t something we understand-it’s just something we survive.

So I delivered the word. Not myself-but the paper. And when it told him I loved him, his tongue never said it back in my direction. He didn’t love me, and I never stopped loving him. He told me that my feelings would pass, that one day I would look back and laugh at myself. That was the most foolish thing to ever leave his lips. I had never loved someone more. I look back and frown at myself. Not because I don’t love him, but because he deserved to hear me say the words “I love you.” Losing him didn’t feel like an ending. It felt like a slow unraveling, a quiet erosion of the person I used to be. The world still moves, days still pass, but I remain stuck somewhere between then and now, between what was and what will never be. 

Some mornings, I wake up expecting to see his name on my screen, as if time could reverse itself, as if fate might show mercy just this once. Other days, I tell myself that moving on is the only way to keep breathing. But love doesn’t vanish-it lingers. It seeps into the spaces between moments, making its home in every song, every familiar street, every careless whisper of the wind. I search for him in places he has never been. In the way raindrops trace patterns on glass, in the way laughter rings out from passing strangers, in the way the world keeps turning as if nothing has changed. But everything has. I wish I could know that he’s thinking when he sees me. Does his heart drop the same way mine does? Does he feel even a fraction of the weight I carry every time I pass by him? Or have I become nothing more than a distant memory, something he doesn’t even think about anymore? 

I keep telling myself that we’re both just waiting for the right moment, that this distance isn’t permanent, that one day we’ll finally talk again. But sometimes, in the quietest parts of the night, I can’t shake the fear that the moment I’m waiting for will never come. That i’ll always be waiting for something that’s already gone. I have lost myself in the process of holding onto something that was never mine to keep. I still love you and I know I always will- but you never loved me. Just because I love you doesn’t mean I will go looking for you in the deepest parts of downtown, I won’t look for you in the halls anymore because to you; I’m just a passing face. I have been trying to get you to love me for a year now, but I can’t love you into loving me.

 I have destroyed myself trying to build a home inside of your heart. You never loved me and I always did. This will be my final act of love. I would do anything for you- I still would. So since you want me to leave you alone that’s what I’ll do. I won’t come to you but if you try to find me I will always be reachable. Love, to me, once meant finding a home in someone else. Now, I think it means learning to exist in the emptiness they leave behind. Maybe love isn’t about who stays. Maybe it’s about who leaves a mark so deep that even in their absence, they never really go.