17/08/2026
LITERARY | Too Late to Name it
I didn’t notice the moment it began.
Perhaps it was in the quiet spaces between our conversations, or in the way your laughter lingered longer in my mind than it should have. Maybe it was the way I started measuring my days not by time, but by whether I had seen you, heard you, existed briefly in the same orbit as you.
If the gods had been watching, I imagine they would have smiled in that knowing, almost cruel way they do.
Eros must have been careless that day—his arrow grazing me instead of striking cleanly. Not enough to wound outright, but enough to let the feeling bloom slowly, unnoticed, like ivy creeping up a forgotten wall.
Aphrodite, I think, would have turned her gaze elsewhere, uninterested in a love so quiet, so unremarkable. And Hermes, ever the messenger, never thought to warn me.
So I went on, unaware.
You were simply you—familiar, easy, and constant. I told myself what I felt was ordinary. Stranger. Comfort. Something safe. I didn’t question why your absence felt louder than anyone else’s presence, or why your words stayed with me long after they were spoken.
By the time I understood, it was already too late.
It wasn’t a sudden revelation. No thunder from Zeus, no dramatic unraveling of truth. Just a quiet, devastating realization that settled into my chest like dusk. You stood before me, unchanged—and yet everything had shifted.
Because you were no longer waiting.
You spoke of someone else, and your voice carried a kind of lightness I had never heard before. A softness. A certainty. The kind I didn’t even know I had been searching for in you.
And in that moment, I finally understood.
The gods hadn’t cursed me. They hadn’t plotted some grand tragedy. They had simply let time run its course, knowing I would hesitate, knowing I would name the feeling only when it had nowhere left to go.
Even Athena, wise as she is, could not have reasoned me out of my silence. I had all the chances in the world—and I let them pass, one by one, like offerings I never placed on the altar.
Now all that remains is this quiet ache.
I still see you. Still hear you. Still exist in that same orbit. But it feels different now, like standing beneath a sky I once thought I understood, only to realize I had been reading the stars wrong all along.
If Eros were to return, I wonder if he would recognize his work.
Or if he would simply shrug, notch another arrow, and leave me here—learning, far too late, that some loves are not meant to be confessed, only realized in hindsight.
✍︎ -Sn-
Art | Joshua Binalla
