In my quiet moments, you are in my thoughts. I see your face in the shade of a newly green tree in early spring. Your smile warms the air around you, and your laughter carries on the wind. The scent of peonies mingles with cherry blossoms in the air. I feel your slender, cold fingers warming against mine until the chill is forgotten.

You study my eyes, your laughter quieting to a gentle smile. I don’t understand how you have this hold over me. You raise your warmed hand to my flushed cheek, soft as a sweet June peach. I hear your voice, but I can’t make out the words. Then you close your eyes, lean your forehead against mine, and draw me into your embrace.

Something is understood in that moment that I cannot yet grasp here, in the present. In my mind’s eye, you’re slightly older than you are now, and neither of us hides behind the glamour that shields our insecurities from the world. We see each other as we are, with an acceptance that feels like coming home. I can fully lower my guard in the safety of your embrace, and you feel understood in my presence in a way you haven’t known elsewhere.

I was summoned by your heart. Your spirit manifested me from those quiet moments you spent wishing to be understood and accepted—to belong to someone who wanted you just as deeply.

I wasn’t looking. I was existing. I was healing, trying to find my footing in a world that seemed to have left me in a cocoon. Then you crossed my path, carried to me by my crew, a new course, and the tide.

You were like a fresh green bamboo stalk in a grove, flexible, bending with the wind, yet surrounded by onlookers. You were a safe harbor amid a storm of uncertainty. For a short while, you welcomed me, then sent me on my way while you continued your pursuit of fortune, as the bold often do.

Then I was swept into a storm near your shoreline, with no lighthouse in sight. I sent out a signal once, twice, three times. No reply.

Feeling abandoned, I left for calmer waters, but I still missed that quiet harbor. I missed the safety of your shoreline. I missed the way your smile felt like sunlight on my face on a cold winter’s day, and how easily we went back and forth, as though we had known each other forever.

But that ease was gone.

I grew confused as siren songs called me back to your shore, whispering through my thoughts that I was missed, that I was welcome, that you yearned for my return. Yet the rough surf, the silence from the coast, and the dark lighthouse told me a different story.

Then, one day, I saw your lighthouse cast its beacon toward another. Over the radio, I heard you welcome someone else. I came to believe that the lighthouse hadn’t been empty, nor the shoreline bare. I simply hadn’t been welcome. I hadn’t been seen as safe or desired.

With a heavy heart, I chose to close myself off from that port forever, never to chart that course again. Why dream of a place where you aren’t welcome? Though it had once been a safe harbor, it no longer felt safe for me.

But I could still hear the siren song.

It haunted my sleep and spilled into my days. Dreams of your shoreline greeted me when I woke and followed me into the night. No matter how hard I tried to focus on other things, your harbor still plagued me.

I turned my attention to my current home port, sealing cracks with tape and using glue to hold together what I knew had long since fallen apart. Only an act of mercy keeps me tending this harbor, knowing it may not be long before it rests permanently at the bottom of the deep.

I remain out of gratitude. It sheltered me when I was losing everything. Staying is my way of saying thank you as it struggles to keep from sinking.

Despite all of that, the siren song still calls me back to your port—the place where I believed I wasn’t welcome, though I’ve begun catching glimpses that make me question that belief. I’ve suspected you’re following my ship, watching where I dock and which way my sails turn. At times, I’ve thought I caught sight of your ship on the horizon, following my course, navigating beneath the same stars.

Now I am left confused, questioning everything.

Do you hear the siren song, too, or have I been adrift on these seas for too long? Is my longing for safe shores making me dream of bamboo groves, early spring, and the scent of peonies and cherry blossoms?

Is your port safe for me?

I dare not send a missive for fear that I am wrong. The siren song still calls, but I have chosen to stop fighting the current. If your lighthouse beacon finds me, if the winds carry me back toward your shores, and if the rough waters and undertow have calmed, I won’t steer away.

Until that day, I’ll continue to sail past your harbor and keep clear of your shoreline, haunted by the sirens that sing to me in the quiet moments, dreaming of bamboo groves, cherry blossoms, and you wrapping me in your arms on an early spring day.

Originally published January 12, 2026