Dominic Riccitello
May 22, 2026

to love without asking for it back

to love without asking for it back image 1
svg
to love without asking for it back image 2
svg
to love without asking for it back image 3
svg
to love without asking for it back image 4
svg
to love without asking for it back image 5
svg
to love without asking for it back image 6
svg
to love without asking for it back image 7
svg
to love without asking for it back image 8
svg
to love without asking for it back image 9
svg
this time aches hollow like wooden boards covered in old numbers weathered markings proof that something once stood here and i lay beside the sound of regard hoping to answer eventually once my thoughts learn how to speak clearly the thing about time is that it moves so elegantly at first softly quietly until suddenly it doesn’t sometimes it arrives as chaos all at once and nothing unfolds the way we imagined it would boards split beneath pressure and we divide ourselves too into fragments into spaces between versions of who we were into the hollowness of the regard i once struggled to give myself we make movement toward mountains not because we expect to conquer them but because something inside us needs to understand the climb and i move through these inner spaces the quiet corners where i leave myself alone to converse with white noise with the hum of fans the static of late nights the soft ringing silence that only appears when no one else is around my time is spent mostly alone days where i feel almost nothing at all and strangely i do not always find sadness there sometimes i find peace sometimes emptiness feels gentle like floating rather than sinking like finally setting down a weight you forgot you were carrying we choose how to live each day and i think that is the strangest beauty of life we decide whether to notice the clouds whether to smile at passing light whether to stop and watch spiders building fragile webs on windowsills creating something delicate that we either preserve or destroy without thinking and somehow that feels deeply human to me that is how i look at life i move constantly yet somehow remain standing still inside myself and i love this feeling sometimes the overwhelming ability to feel everything at once the heaviness the softness the ache the clarity people forget as they grow older that experience itself is the thing shaping us not success not perfection but the willingness to fully live through things so if i stand here one day knowing i gave nothing at all what would i even have to mourn we give ourselves to time whether we realize it or not and i choose to let it shake me because i love the feeling of honesty settling deep into my bones even when it hurts we speak honestly in moments or we choose silence instead and allow that silence to slowly haunt us i would rather embarrass myself by loving too openly than spend my life untouched by experience because our horrors shape us too our fears our heartbreaks our failed attempts at becoming we build mountains from them and spend years learning how to climb and i would rather stand at the edge of this life knowing i gave everything i could than remain a hundred feet behind myself forever wondering what might have happened if i had only tried harder to live we love through time through change through uncertainty and i love deeply because of that i love to feel the love i give without demanding life return it equally because maybe the point was never to be guaranteed something back maybe the point was simply to feel it honestly while we were here at all