You come from us

you come from a woman from a body that carried you without question, from hands that knew you before you spoke, from a kind of care you never had to ask for

you were held before you understood what holding was, fed before you knew hunger, loved before you knew how to return it

you were soothed when you didn’t understand your own discomfort
you were seen before you knew how to be seen, you were answered before you knew how to ask

and then you grow into a world that teaches you distance teaches you how to move forward, how to leave, how to harden, how to forget what it felt like to be kept

and you come back to us as men standing in front of women as if we are something new, something to figure out, something to reach

but we are not new

we are the same place you once lived inside

so why do you do this

why do you stand so close and still not see us why do you reach
without knowing what you’re reaching for why do you touch without understanding what you’re holding

why do you move through us as if we are surface

not all of you
but most of you

and it repeats

the same distance
the same absence
the same quiet disconnect
as if something in you
chose forgetting
over remembering

because you don’t know us

not the way we feel you before you speak, not the way we notice what you don’t say, not the way we hold what passes through you without you ever stopping to see it

we feel your hesitation your distraction, your presence when it’s real
and your absence when it isn’t

we feel when you arrive
and when you don’t

and still

we are expected to remain

as if closeness is something that happens
just because you are near

but it is not

it is as if you forgot completely what it was like to be known without asking, to be cared for without earning it, to be held without having to arrive

and now you move through us as if we are surface—but we are not

we are still that same quiet place, still able to hold, still able to know

still capable of seeing you in ways you don’t yet —see yourself

but no longer willing
to be forgotten
while you stand inside us

you come from us

and still

you don’t remember

how to see us
how to feel us
how to meet us

in the very way
we once held you