And then there are the ones who are more quiet still. Never come close. Perhaps they may admire you from afar and are too shy to speak, perhaps to anyone, let alone someone who delights their eye and soul as well. Perhaps, they are not able to do eve that, because they cannot imagine that your friendliness, or even your general lack of cruelty toward them, is directed, perhaps, or intended as an overture of friendship.

Foolish they might be called, but only one who knows but does not act, is truly a fool.
Although, foolish we feel–as of course, I, a little science boy, was one of them.

Such that I was adored by my sweetheart for more than 5 years before either of us spoke more than a few words to each other.

The rest, as goes the saying, is history. And I am so very fortunate that my reticence–that looked like foolishness, but was not; and that about which I should not feel foolish in retrospect, but do–did not result in two lost souls; incomplete; forever searching for their other half. One never to know how close he was; the other, never having understood his reticence.