You're a stranger I'll meet in three years
Right now you're asleep on my chest
Tomorrow you'll say you love me for the last time
Yesterday you meant it when you said it
Last month I didn't know you existed
Next month I'll wish that was still true

Your ex taught you that thing you do with your tongue
Someone's wife taught me to leave before morning
We're just practicing on each other's bodies
For people who will matter more later
Trading damaged goods at discount prices
Both overcharged and still somehow cheated

Three tequilas past midnight you finally said it
That thing that would have saved us in January
But it's August now and I'm someone else's Thursday night
Your perfect words are homeless in my mouth
Like when you remember the comeback
Years after the argument ended

We ****** like a house fire for three months straight
Both of us pretending smoke was atmosphere
You called it passion when I bruised your thighs
I called it love when you broke my phone
We confused intensity for intimacy
Until there was nothing left to burn

I started leaving parts of me at your apartment
First my toothbrush then my sanity
By June you had my favorite jacket my sleep schedule
My ability to *** without thinking of you
When you left you took nothing forgot everything
And I'm still paying rent on that empty space

and throughout Liminality,
a clear emergence:
the space inside transition
that once was uncertainty
could instead be
exploration and freedom;
less control and more agency
as paradoxical as it feels,
in this wild state
in which evolutionary conditions
struggle to adapt
to such frantic
realism

I think they fumbled
when they said
we should pursue happiness
I now think that's something
you stumble
upon
like tripping down stairs
(and equally as painful)
except the bruise
tells you
a secret that neither
the floor above
or an elevator ride
could have told you
from trigger to response
stimulus intensifies
but you cannot stumble upon
without carving a gap
inside
to slow, to ponder
to chew without rumination
to wonder without
expectations
especially from ourselves
that's how you may find it
without hurry, without
anxiety
it'll be a gentle knock
least expected
that has finally
arrived