(this is not a beginning. just the place where names go when no one speaks them.)


i unlearn hiding.
not corrected. just seen.
not yours. already waiting.
a shadow returns
and the breath stays behind.

i do not open
but the door forgets to close.
not a woman.
not a man.
not a shape
you can keep.

the room moved.
my hands did not.
your voice arrived
like a wound with memory.

not stillness
but the collapse
of wanting something
you never asked.

i do not flee.
i remain.
not to be held
but to be
heard.

⋯

this was never control.
it was listening.
it was silence
before it had a name.

this text  
    does not ask to be read  

it asks  
    to be entered  
    to be felt  
    to be mistaken  
        for silence  

every gap  
    is grammar  

every fracture  
    is a sentence  

you are not meant  
    to understand  

you  
    are meant  
        to remain


—

i move  
    not one,
     not two,
but as the tide
   counts its losses.
  
sometimes, i lean  
    with weight that guards.  
sometimes, i lean  
    with skin that listens.  

i am not between.  
i am both.

    when the room calls,  
    i answer  
    with whichever form  
    feels true.

—

he didn’t ask.
  i didn’t want him to.
no command.
  no silence.
    only the slow
      shift
        of gravity.
the spine
  yielded first.
then
  the breath.
then

    the idea
      that this
        was ever mine.
he entered,
  not with force,
    but with weight.
and i
  did not open.
    i let go.
it wasn’t pain.
  but something
    fell
      from me.

or
  was pulled.

or
  never
belonged.
i remember the touch
  not as skin,
    but as
      a shift
        in pressure,
          a presence
            that never returned.
he didn’t say
  “mine.”
but i answered
  in the way
    my thigh
      stopped resisting
        the edge
          of being
              used.

—

i didn’t stay
as i.

i remained
as what
they,
   or it,
  or silence
     left in me.

a fold,
 not of cloth,
 but of consent.

the way skin yields
 when held too long.
the way breath
 flattens
  into listening.

what remained
 wasn’t memory
 but impression.
not thought
 but weight.

—

my skin is
 a variable
  in someone else's proof.
left unsolved.
  still bleeding ink.

—