She arrives before the knowing Just warmth held open in the dark (somewhere underneath the quiet) You found the thing in me I'd learned to keep in the dark, something I had left deliberately untouched Warm beneath the silence, older than the word I have for it, not loud — but constant, and it recognizes something I don't have a room for I let it have the parts I couldn't consecrate myself, the ones I kept behind the door It didn't ask I stood at the edge of it and measured what I stood to lose Then opened anyway — nothing to brace against, no moment I can point to Just the slow realization I was already inside You take what answers Slip between the ribs and the rhythm underneath Before I know the shape of what this is I'm already inside it Come and take it Come and take it You don't arrive, you adjust the pressure of the room until I forget which side of the glass I'm standing on I open my mouth and taste you in the syllables, like you were already living in the language The mirror catches something just behind me wearing my expression home Something ancient uncoiling under the sternum, not pain exactly — more like recognition The way a wound remembers what made it and calls it back without deciding to You take what answers Move through the hollow space I used to call my chest Every time I find the will to put distance between us the body overrules me, opens like it knows Not held — inhabited Something in me has been setting the table for this longer than I've been alive You call this devotion I've stopped arguing what to call it There is a version of me that walked away from this door She didn't make it far Say whatever this is until I stop questioning it Take whatever's left of me and walk it somewhere I won't recognize I am not resisting — I am past that I am the one who left the door unlocked You were never outside You were always the heat that learned to answer when I called The mirror takes a moment now — a half-second delay between the movement and the reflection I move, and feel something move first Too late to call this body unoccupied It was already open when I got there You take what answers Move through the space I used to call mine Every line I draw dissolves before I finish it I stopped asking where you end There is only this — the pull, the weight, the familiar dark And I have made my peace with not coming back from it You remain when the trembling stops Still present in the density of the room Not gone Never gone Just quiet (for now)
