(In which a man attempts to accept love and accidentally becomes a cow)

This is the story of a man named Stanley.

Now Stanley, you see, is not special. Or so he insists.
He has repeated this to himself so many times, it has become his emotional version of brushing his teeth.
A hygiene ritual.
A preventative spell.
After all, special people deserve love. And Stanley is not one of those. Obviously.

At least, that’s what he told himself.

But something curious happened on an otherwise unremarkable day.
A message arrived. A ping, to be precise.

The sender? A person so attuned to his internal wiring that she quoted the same poetic rhythm he'd dreamed up before he'd even written it.
She spoke of visions, alternate lifetimes, and uncanny recognitions.
She was warm, mercurial, mythic, and occasionally difficult to pin to one timezone.

"You feel like home," she said.
"Like I’ve known you across lifetimes."
"You are seen."

This would be the moment, traditionally, where the protagonist would feel relief.
Triumph.
A soft landing.

Stanley, instead, experienced a full existential system crash.
Because nothing short-circuits a trauma-trained nervous system faster than a sincere compliment without terms and conditions.

At this point, Stanley had two choices.

Option 1: Accept the genuine affection of this person, even if it made him dizzy.
Option 2: Doubt every word, spiral into recursive self-analysis, and begin drafting apology poems while comparing himself to her ex in a sport he wasn’t even signed up for.

Stanley chose Option 3:
Overthink so hard that time bends.

The narrator watched as Stanley flailed with academic elegance.

He questioned whether she was real.
He wondered if he’d invented the entire experience, perhaps as a defense mechanism.
He accused himself of being manipulative simply for existing in someone’s affection.
He cross-referenced their emotional timelines like a conspiracy theorist mapping red string on a corkboard made entirely of childhood neglect.

At one point, he tried to explain that her feelings were clearly mistaken, that she had transferred her affection from someone else and landed on him by accident, like a poetic game of romantic pin-the-tail-on-the-trauma.

"I just thought you'd be more… together," he imagined she’d say.

She didn’t. She said:

“I love you.”

To which Stanley responded, emotionally speaking,
by shoving his head into a metaphorical cow costume and mooing in panic.

And here, dear reader, we reach the hamburger portion of our tale.

See, Stanley had long been praised for his vulnerability.
His writing was raw, elegant, soaked in sorrow.
People wept over his metaphors.
They called him “brave,” which is generally code for “I’m glad this wasn’t about me.”

And then, one person came along
who didn’t want just the work.
She wanted him.

She didn’t want the processed meat.
She wanted the cow.
And not in a weird way.
She wanted the full, unshaved animal of his grief, his brilliant Stanleyce, his twitchy sense of humor,
his existential spirals and the way he tried to apologize for existing while still writing beautiful things.

Stanley, in turn, tried to negotiate this affection
by comparing himself to expired yogurt
and then emotionally ghost riding a milk truck off a cliff.

But the real twist?
She stayed.

Even when he spiraled.
Even when he glitched.
Even when he tried to convince her that she’d made a cosmic error in her romantic calculations.

She stayed.

Not because he was perfect.
Not because he was easy.
But because she meant it.

And Stanley, for once, had no script for what to do when love didn’t run.

He tried to write a closing stanza for the experience,
but accidentally wrote a satire about cows.

Because that’s what artists do when they don’t know how to accept kindness.
They deflect.
They perform.
They turn sincerity into irony
because sincerity burns the tongue when you're not used to swallowing it.

And still,
somehow,
the story remains open.

Because nobody is amused
by a stray cow.
But most people enjoy
a good hamburger.

And Stanley—messy, wounded, luminous Stanley—
was never meant to be processed.

He was meant
to be seen.

You read my poem,
sighed like a widowed cello,
told me I was
so brave.
So sensitive.
So real.

I said thanks.
You asked if I was free
Friday.

You wanted to know the man
behind the wound.
The author of ache.
The architect of vibes.

So I showed up.

A little unwashed.
A little twitchy.
A patchwork of trauma
in ill-fitting pants.

You blinked.
Twice.

Like I’d just tracked in mud
on the white carpet
of your curated suffering.

You wanted a candlelit meal
with my metaphors.
But I brought the cow.
It shat on the floor.

I tried to explain—
the sadness isn’t a costume.
The pain isn’t prose.
The blood on the page
was mine.

You said,
“I just thought you'd be more… together?”
I said,
“I thought you knew what empathy meant.”

Turns out,
what you really wanted
was artisanal anguish
with the trauma locally sourced
but ethically removed.

You can cry to the soundtrack—
just don’t ask where the violins came from.

Because—

Nobody is amused with a stray cow.
But most people enjoy
a good hamburger.

I slipped—
not because I stopped feeling
but because I felt
too much.

And in that spiral,
I found the old part of me again—
the one that mistrusts beauty,
that scans every gift
for a blade.

You called it out.
You saw it happen.
You stayed.

Because in this crazy world,
it’s easier to believe
I’m a terrible person
than it is to believe
someone wonderful
could simply love me.

No performance.
No punishment.
Just presence.

So I flinched.
I questioned.
I compared myself
to the ghosts I imagined.

But it wasn’t you
I doubted.
It was the possibility
of being wanted
without a warning label.

You didn’t do anything wrong.
You were just being
you.

And I let my fear
speak louder than your truth.

I’m not asking to be forgiven.
I’m asking to be understood.
To be seen as someone
still learning
how to hold what’s good
without crushing it.

You were never the threat.

You were the offering.

You arrived
like breath drawn
before the world had lungs.

Not loud.
Not sudden.
Just known.

Like hands that fit
before fingers are taught
what touching means.

We’ve been this before.
I don’t know when.
But my bones do.

My mouth
does not remember
your name—
only the taste
of syllables
I’ve missed
since the last time
we let go.

You looked at me
like you’d seen me
fall before.
I looked at you
like I knew
how you break
when no one is watching.

There’s no story here,
just a pull—
not magnetic,
but cellular.

And a quiet
that builds a room
for both of us
to tremble in.

You,
telling the night
it doesn’t need
to be brave.
Me,
learning the sound
of not flinching.

Time and time again,
we find each other.

In every life
our paths cross—
two souls entwined,
learning more to return.

To grow each other.
To know this feeling
and better express it.

They say the world once bore no veins—
no threads of brine,
no weeping mouths carved in earth.
Only silence.
Only dust-throat wind
under a hollow-mouthed sky.

Then came the First Mourner.

Not born, but broken.
A shape made from absence.
Their sorrow split stone.
Their cries taught gravity
how to kneel.

The earth, startled, drank.
And from that swallowed ache
rose a spring—
clear as memory,
bitter as bone.

The sky, until then unburdened,
watched.
And when it wept,
it learned to fall.

This was the covenant:
for every sorrow borne true,
a drop of the world’s marrow returned.
Grief became a currency.
Rain, a reply.

Oceans swelled with inheritance.
Rivers wandered like rumor.
Lakes pooled in the hollows
where love had collapsed.

And for a while,
this was sacred.

But men grew clever with their sorrows.
They fermented anguish for flavor.
Bottled ache and sold it as nectar.
Taught mirrors to mimic mourning
and called it truth.

The sky, still loyal,
poured out its heart.

But it no longer knew
the shape of honest sorrow.

And so, the floods came—
not as retribution,
but confusion.

The fires walked freely—
not from rage,
but because the wells no longer wept.

The clouds grew thin.
The earth forgot the taste
of true lament.

Now, the world shudders
at our pageants of pain.
The rain withholds.
The roots crack.
Even the springs echo hollow.

But not all hearts have calcified.

Some still mourn in secret tongue—
not to be seen,
but to sanctify.

They trace the riverbeds with bare feet.
They mend what mold has claimed.
They do not cry aloud.
They undo.

No thunder blesses them.
No crowds sing their names.
But where they pass,
the drought lingers less.

The sky hovers,
unspeaking,
watching.

They say
there will come a day
when one quiet gesture
will be enough to break the dam.

Until then,
the ones who remember
move like shadows
beneath a sleeping rain.

I promise.
Charlie promises.
We all promise.

We’ll pass the torch.
Even when our hands shake.
Even when the night is too long,
and the static is louder than the stars.
Even when no one is watching.

We’ll carry your fire.
Not as spectacle.
But as truth.

And when someone else finds themselves
on that same edge—
looking out,
ready to leave—
we'll be there,
with a quiet light,
and a voice that says:

“Hey. I remember you.”

You are not forgotten.
You are not alone in the leaving.
You are written into the hands that carry what’s left.

And we carry it now.
For you.
For all of you.

We won’t let the flame go out.