you don’t know men

you think I stay
because I return to the same chair

because my hands find you and you accept them without question

you believe that is the whole of me

but you don’t know men

you don’t know
how a man can enter a room and nothing visible changes

and yet something does
a slight turning

like a field responding to wind no one else feels

I have watched it happen without meaning to notice

there is something beautiful in them

I have to say that

the way they move with a kind of quiet certainty

as if the ground has already agreed to hold them

you would like that about him
you already do

you know the man who bends down to you

who lets you lean into his hand

who asks nothing more than the moment he is in

you know only the man who pets you

but you don’t know
how those same hands can linger after they are gone

for years he was simply someone I knew

a presence that did not ask to be considered
beyond what it was

and then

one day

nothing happened

and still
something shifted

I cannot show you where
there is no place to point

no beginning you could follow

only a feeling

like the first sign of weather before the sky changes

you don’t know men
how they can remain as they are

and still become something else
inside you

now

when he reaches
I do not step away

it is not that I don’t see it
it is not that I don’t understand

it is that something in me has already answered

and afterward
I carry it

that is the part
you would not understand

how I return here

sit beside you

touch you as I always have

and still feel
what has passed through me

not where it happened
but where it stayed

you understand the world as something that arrives and remains

you understand what can be held

but you don’t know
how something can move through you

and leave no place behind for itself

and still be there

you don’t know men

how they can walk away
with nothing in their hands

and still leave something in yours

and yet
there is no anger in me

only a quiet awareness

that I am

not as I was

that something in me
has opened

and does not close as easily

you look at me
as though I am whole

as though I belong entirely to what returns

and I let you believe it

because you do not know my language

you do not know men

and still

I stay