The name «Kay.» sits above the poem like someone being called across a room. What follows is eleven short lines addressed to a person who "tend[s] to keep away." The speaker has watched this person for a long time. They remember the pleasure of a smile, they have sensed the "tidal wave of emotion" underneath, and they have waited for words that never quite arrive. The central idea is a tender, slightly helpless kind of care. The speaker wants "you to be happy," yet knows that the road there runs through "sharing feelings," which is "scary." The poem ends on a warning that applies to both people: "Things won't be the same. / In seconds things can change."
The most interesting thing about the poem is how its punctuation behaves. Several sentences are cut in half by full stops. "The tidal wave of emotion within you. / I could always see" is really one thought, *I could always see the tidal wave of emotion within you*, but the poem splits it and reverses the order. The same happens with "But I have wished upon many stars. / For you to be happy." The purpose clause is stranded on its own line, as if the speaker pauses before admitting what the wishing was for. Other lines are fragments with no main verb at all: "Wondering when you would speak." The poem is itself hesitant. It keeps starting to say something, stopping, and starting again, which is exactly the behaviour it describes in the person it addresses. Even the opening "Though you tend to keep away" is only half a sentence, a "though" with no "but" to answer it until the speaker supplies one in memory.
That habit of contrast runs through the poem. Three lines open with "Though" or "But", and each one pushes against something. The person keeps away, *but* the speaker has noticed them anyway. The speaker has wished for their happiness, *though* good people are rare. The poem seems to argue with itself, moving between worry and affection without settling.
The two main images pull in opposite directions. A "tidal wave" is enormous, wet, and unstoppable, a force that arrives from far away and flattens things. Placing it "within" a quiet person suggests a huge inner life held behind a calm surface. It also sits close to the earlier image of the smile, so we sense that the smile is the small, visible edge of something much larger. The stars are the opposite: distant, still, and out of reach. To wish on "many stars" is to admit you cannot do anything directly. The speaker's only tools are hope and attention, and the word "many" suggests that hope has been tried again and again.
The poem has no regular rhyme scheme and no fixed metre. The lines are short and sound like plain speech, which suits a poem about difficulty speaking. Still, there is sound-patterning if you listen. Three consecutive lines end in the same soft "ee" sound: "happy," "rarely," "scary." They almost rhyme, and that near-chime gives the middle of the poem a gentle, falling cadence, as if the speaker is lowering their voice. A long "a" sound then echoes through "away," "wave," "always," "same," and "change." The final pair, "same" and "change," lands like a rhyme, which makes the ending feel firmer than anything before it, even though what it says is unsettling.
The last two lines also rely on the vaguest word in the poem, "things." Nothing is named: not a friendship, not a feeling, not a secret. That vagueness is a form of honesty, because the speaker does not know what will change if the silence breaks. "In seconds" makes the risk sharper. The wall that has stood for a long time could fall in the time it takes to say a sentence. It is also unclear who is afraid. "Sharing feelings is scary" could explain the silence of the person addressed, or the speaker's own, and the poem lets both readings stand.
What makes the poem worth reading is how little it demands. The speaker does not accuse or plead for an answer. They only report what they have seen and wished. For students, it shows how a poem can be built from the plainest words and still do careful work, with every full stop acting as a held breath.