We have learned to keep one another
within the easy reach of a thumb,
yet the distance between
two souls has become a country
without roads.
A message arrives—
Take care.
Two words, neatly folded,
sent across the afternoon
like a paper boat on a river
no one intends to cross.
Love is a set of conditions.
Trust waits outside the door
while suspicion searches its pockets
for something stolen.
We sit together at a table,
each face illuminated
by a separate little moon;
our fingers wander
through the world
while the person beside us
grows unfamiliar with every passing minute.
Once, silence meant
there was nothing left to hide.
Now, silence is a punishment,
a door slammed without sound,
a verdict delivered by
the absence of three dots.
We have become skilled at
leaving without departing—
withholding tenderness,
postponing apologies,
turning affection into a debt
the other must keep paying.
And yet, beneath this polished indifference,
some ancient creature in us
still waits at the window.
It listens for footsteps
that do not come with an explanation,
for a voice that remembers
the tremor we concealed,
for a hand that stays even
when there is nothing left to gain.
Perhaps we are not tired of loving;
we are tired of negotiating
the price of being loved.
We want to be understood
without submitting evidence,
to be forgiven without
rehearsing our innocence,
to sit beside someone
and let the world remain
unanswered for a while.
But morning comes.
The screens awaken.
The familiar strangers return
to their carefully managed lives.
And somewhere,
between a read receipt
and an unanswered call,
a human being quietly wonders
whether anyone would notice
if, tomorrow, they stopped pretending
to be all right.
