imprinted, and choosing gentleness

“we choose friendship
with love still breathing softly between us,
imprints resting beneath the skin,
unmoved by time or names.
not to return,
not to reach,
but to honor what was real
and carry it gently,
without letting it wound.”

we are trying to be friends again, and i don’t think people understand how much courage that actually takes. it isn’t casual. it isn’t light. it isn’t a shrug of the shoulders or a nostalgic reach back. it is a conscious, daily choice to meet something real without pretending it never mattered. it is choosing honesty over convenience. it is choosing care over erasure.

i told him he is imprinted on me because my body already knew it, and keeping that truth locked inside felt like lying by omission. imprinting isn’t poetic exaggeration to me. it is visceral. it lives in my nervous system. it lives in the way my breath still adjusts, the way my body recognizes him before my thoughts assemble. it is not longing. it is not confusion. it is recognition that has already happened and cannot be undone.

imprinting doesn’t ask for permission. it doesn’t consult logic or timelines. it happens when something meaningful settles deep enough to leave a mark. and once it’s there, it doesn’t disappear just because the relationship changes shape. it adapts. it quiets. it learns how to exist inside new boundaries. but it remains. pretending otherwise would be denial, and denial only turns truth into something heavy and dangerous.

i love him, and he loves me. that is not a secret. that is not a threat. it is simply true. this love is not reckless or grasping or unfinished. it is not trying to resurrect what was or demand what cannot be. it is a mature, grounded love that comes from having known each other deeply, from having mattered to each other in ways that reshaped us. love like this does not vanish just because romance ends. it evolves, or it calcifies. we are choosing evolution.

trying to be friends again means holding the truth with steady hands. it means acknowledging the imprint without feeding it. it means setting boundaries not because something is wrong, but because something is powerful. restraint here is not repression—it is reverence. it is choosing not to exploit the pull. it is choosing to respect the gravity instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.

this kind of friendship requires presence. it requires self-awareness. it requires checking yourself when old reflexes stir, when familiarity feels too easy, when the body remembers before the mind intervenes. it is not effortless, but it is intentional. and intention matters. intention is what keeps love from becoming chaos.

there is tenderness here. deep, aching tenderness. in laughter that still feels natural. in conversations that don’t need warming up. in silence that doesn’t feel empty or awkward. there is also grief—grief for what cannot be acted on, grief for the versions of closeness that must remain memories instead of realities. both can exist at the same time. they do not cancel each other out.

imprinting does not mean ownership. it does not mean entitlement. it does not mean future. it means history written into the body. it means recognition that survives transition. it means i was open enough to be changed, and i am not ashamed of that. being imprinted means i felt fully. it means something real passed between us. and real things deserve honesty, not minimization.

we are friends again because we choose to be. because we know ourselves better now. because love, when it is healthy, does not cling or demand or destabilize. it steadies. it teaches discipline. it teaches care. it teaches you how to hold intensity without letting it burn everything down.

this is not messy. this is not irresponsible. this is not confusion disguised as poetry. this is two people acknowledging truth and choosing integrity anyway. choosing respect. choosing to let something meaningful exist without consuming us.

some people leave fingerprints on your soul. not to claim it. not to take it. just to mark that they were there, and that something real happened.

this is one of those marks.
felt deeply.
held carefully.
named honestly.

with ink & bloom 🌻