A Calculus of Unspent Grace

She learned love not from pursuit,
but from pause.

From the way her eyes found the ground
just before his name reached her lips,
from the way her hands folded prayers
around words she never released.

Love came to her without permission—
it arrived barefoot,
tracking hope across the clean floors of her resolve,
and sat quietly in her chest
like it had always lived there.

Each morning,
she dressed herself in restraint.
Not the loud kind—
no slammed doors,
no dramatic goodbyes.
Just the careful art of choosing elsewhere.

She wore distance like a shawl,
thin but necessary,
and wrapped her silence tight
before stepping into the world
where his eyes existed.

Sometimes they met her from across rooms—
accidental,
startling,
brief as lightning.

In those seconds,
her heart rehearsed a thousand confessions.
Love crowded her ribs,
begged for daylight,
burned to be named.

But she swallowed it whole.

She taught her tongue obedience,
bit down on every almost,
trained her breath not to betray her.
If love was a storm,
she became the shore that did not rush to it.

She loved him in the quiet ways:
By remembering what he liked
and never telling him.
By noticing the sound of his laughter
and pretending it didn’t undo her.
By turning away when her name
would have looked right
on his questions.

Silence became her sanctuary.
Not empty—
just sacred.

People think love is loud,
that it announces itself
with reckless honesty.
They don’t speak of this kind—
where love stays seated,
hands folded,
because standing would destroy something
too delicate to survive truth.

There were nights
she argued with herself.
Nights when courage looked like confession
and fear wore the mask of wisdom.

But morning always taught her the same lesson:
Some loves are not meant to be held—
only protected.

So she chose him,
by not choosing herself.
She chose peace,
by planting desire behind her ribs
and letting it grow wild
where no one could see.

If he ever wondered why
she kept that careful distance,
why her presence felt like gravity
and absence felt intentional,
he never asked.

And she never explained.

Because love,
for her,
was never about arrival.

It was about restraint.

She loved enough
to walk away.

- Khushi Kaul