I know what time she leaves the building because I've memorized her schedule without meaning to. Not from asking. From noticing. The way her jacket appears in the hallway at 5:12 most days, the sound of her keys before I see her face. I've assembled a whole person out of fragments she never intended to give me, and I carry her around like a file that won't close.

She told a story once about a dog she had as a kid and how it used to sleep on her feet. She was telling the whole room but I was the only one who kept it. I still think about it. The dog. Her feet. The way her voice went softer at the end of the sentence. That was seven months ago. She doesn't know I have it. She doesn't know I have any of it.

I'm in love with someone who experiences me as background. I am a person she says hi to, asks about the weather, holds the door for. I exist in her peripheral vision. And inside that ordinary distance I have built something enormous and completely one-sided, a cathedral with no congregation, a signal broadcast into a room where no one is tuned to the frequency.

The worst part isn't the rejection. There hasn't been one. The worst part is the absence of any event at all. Nothing has happened. Nothing will happen. I will continue to notice her jacket and she will continue to not notice me noticing and this feeling will live and die inside my chest without ever once touching air. I've started to wonder if love that is never spoken counts as love at all or if it's just a very detailed form of loneliness. Do you carry someone like this? Someone who has no idea what they are to you? What would happen if you told them?