loving you
has always felt like muscle memory.
like something my body
already knew how to do.

some mornings,
i find you in the kitchen,
barefoot,
your hair falling soft down your back
that streak of silver catching light
like it has a story of its own.

your lips move
the way i imagine
god meant lips to move,
and you smile
like you know
something about peace
that no one else does.

you don’t try to be beautiful.
you just are
in the way your eyes crinkle
when you laugh,
in the way you tuck your hair
behind your ear
without thinking twice.

some days,
i watch you move through the room
like it was built
to hold you gently,
and i swear
my chest remembers how to beat
because you’re near.

i’m sorry,
but loving you
is still so easy.

I run my hands
through passion fruit
vines and watch
the juice drip
down my elbow,
It stains,
slow and sticky,
like blame.

I laugh,
I speak,
and the walls shrink.
Is it me?

I never know
until you flinch.

questions don’t live rent-free.
i pay for them daily
in the pause before i open my eyes,
in the stretch of silence between
brushing my teeth and leaving the house.

i don’t even want answers.
just quiet.
just enough stillness
to make coffee without thinking
about my funeral.

who will be there?
will i even make it
to grandchildren?
will they know the sound of my laugh,
the weight of my arms,
the way i stare too long when i love something?

will i ever be
a dad?
a husband?
someone who feels like home
to someone else?

someone worth
having children with,
worth staying for?

the urge to leave
never says goodbye.
it just lingers in the corners,
waits until i’m lowest,
then whispers its name
like an old song.

and still,
none of this showed up today.
these thoughts didn’t knock.
they didn’t barge in
like a drunk friend
or some stranger needing a phone call.

they’re more like
the sheets i haven’t changed,
the dust that outlines the mirror,
The trash in my car.

they don’t haunt me.
they live here.
and they stay
because i let them.

I’ve seen life take
a librarian,
a beautiful woman,
intuition like no other.
Cancer, they said.

My friend really loved her.
She was the first
to notice he was gay,
and she accepted him.

So we climbed into his
Toyota Tercel,
winding down curves,
up the mountain,
toward the funeral home.

People sat in rows of nine,
a special couch reserved
beside the casket.

The dead have always
bothered me,
like a one sided conversation,
like the air in my lungs
was a debt I owed.

So I sat in the back,
people watching as I do,
a wallflower,
star jasmine pressing
against the concrete.

Close to the exit,
in case discomfort
asked me to leave.

Then her husband walked in,
a man I’d never seen,
only heard in stories.

He went straight to her,
pressed his hands
against her face,
like he was
trying to hold on.

He cried.
His voice tore
the room apart.
Collapsed to his knees,
hands trembling with rage,
words ripping from his throat,
sharp, jagged, impossible
to take back.

Not a prayer.
Not a conversation.
It was a howl
that made the
walls bend,
love dressed in grief,
so fierce
it seemed to claw
at the air itself.

A good lover
she must have been.

And I understood:
maybe no one listens,
but the silence
always knows
what to say.