Inescapable (II)

Did not arrive at this lightly.

This quiet, persistent regard has established itself within me. Without any assurance of return.

As though it had always known how to inhabit me before – I had the language to refuse it.

You were never meant to reside here in this manner. I have known you within the ordinary hours.

In conversation that carried no weight. In laughter that did not ask to be remembered.

In that quiet familiarity that rendered everything. Effortless and unguarded.

But also, in the moments where composure failed me. Where I did not conceal myself, where something in me gave way without resistance.

You have seen me there—

Not as an observer.

But as one who remained, who did not turn away from what was difficult to hold, who received what I had not intended to reveal.

You have known my silence with a precision that unsettles me, recognized its weight before I could name it.

Read the subtle alterations in me with a clarity that has, at times, exceeded my own.

There is a familiarity in you that reaches beyond language.

As though you have learned the internal blueprints of me, without ever being instructed.

And somewhere within that knowing, something altered.

Not abruptly, not sufficiently to be named. But with the quiet inevitability of something taking root beneath the surface of what appeared unchanged.

I care for you in a way that does not demand. And yet- cannot convincingly claim.

It requires nothing.

There is a tenderness in it, yes. But also a gravity that settles into me with a patience I cannot interrupt.

Because to care in this manner is to remain within the presence of something that neither fully arrives nor entirely withdraws.

Something that exists in a suspended condition between what is felt and what is permitted.

You exist within that interval. Not absent, not wholly present, and still you alter me.

Not through declaration, not through certainty, but through the quiet persistence of your being.

Through the way you remain just near enough to be undeniable, and just beyond what I can claim.

Not for what might be, not for what has not come to pass, but for what is.

This quiet, unclaimed connection that neither of us has been willing to relinquish.

It rests between us. Like something living.

Unacknowledged, and yet fully formed.

Something that continues not because it is sustained, but because it has not been undone.

And I do not resent you for it.

I simply recognize what it asks of me. To feel without resolution, to remain without conclusion, to understand without release.

And in this immensity

I no longer attempt to resist.

To be a continued . .