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There’s a particular ache that lives in so many of us—quiet, almost invisible.
The ache of staying where we are, even when we’re not fully met.
I see it so clearly now: how often we silence our longings in the name of comfort.
How we tuck away our desires—emotional, sexual, spiritual—because they feel too much, too inconvenient or simply unreciprocated.
We want to be held.
To be seen.
To be understood.
To be recognised for what we carry.
To be met in our sensuality, our softness, our wildness.
To speak of the more we feel in our bones without fear of being dismissed or made small.
But too often, we shrink.
We accept crumbs.
We swallow our needs, our voices, our magic—just to stay safe.
Just to keep belonging.
This piece was born from witnessing that pattern—first in him,
the one I reconnected with, as I quietly recognised where he was.
And then slowly in myself.
And in many ways, in all of us.
Not as a callout.
But to name. To mirror.
A soft unveiling.
An offering of words for all that has gone unspoken.
The Things We Swallow
(a poem for all the things we keep quiet in love)
We learn to live on half-portion love.
To sip from cups that never fill—
to hold the ache beneath the ribs
and call it enough.
We stay.
Because it is warmer here
in the numb and the known,
than in the storm of asking
for what we truly need.
We don’t speak
of the hunger that lives in the bones—
the kind that isn’t just about sex
but soul-skin contact,
about the way we ache
to be held with knowing.
We sit in silence
under the weight of absence—
emotional, physical, unspoken—
trying to remember
what it felt like
to be truly wanted.
To be chosen
not for what we offer,
but for who we are.
We become famished—
not just for intimacy,
but for touch that says,
I see you.
For closeness that rises from reverence.
For being taken, slowly,
as if we are sacred ground.
We starve for someone to meet us
in that primal, wordless place
where breath and body speak
what language cannot hold.
We shrink our longings down to crumbs—
a kiss with intention,
a word with depth,
a look that lingers.
God, how we feast on so little
and pretend we are full.
We want
to be seen in the quiet ways:
the way we keep the ship afloat,
the way we soften our edge
so someone else can keep their armour.
But they don’t see.
Or they can’t.
Or they won’t.
And so we start dimming,
hiding whole galaxies of desire
in our throats.
We hush the part that wants more.
More touch.
More tenderness.
More truth.
More aliveness.
We tell that part to be quiet,
that it’s too much,
too bold,
too inconvenient.
And the silence spreads.
We stop sharing the hard things
because they never land softly—
and so our hearts become echo chambers,
loud only to ourselves.
We miss the sound
of being met,
mid-thought,
mid-sentence—
not just listened to,
but understood.
We miss the lightness—
the play,
the laughter,
the soft shoulder of joy
to lean against
after long days.
We long to be met in mind,
in wonder,
in meaning.
To toss stars across the table,
to speak of wild dreams
without shame.
But when our storm meets their stillness,
we start to bend our brilliance
into quieter shapes,
moulding our edges
to fit inside their fear.
We trade growth for proximity.
We dim.
We defer.
We disappear.
Still, we stay.
Because leaving means risking comfort
for the chance at wholeness.
Because sometimes
not being alone
feels safer
than being unmet.
So we learn to live
on the things we swallow.
And call that
love.
With love,
Rhian xx
This piece is part of a series. Check out the other posts in the series here.
