(a cycle about light, illusion, and staying your size)
BEFORE THE GAZE
Sometimes you don’t love the person,
you love who you become in their gaze.
But when that gaze fades,
you remain. Without the light. Without enlargement.
Just you, exact.
THE FIRST SHINE
He didn’t fall in love with her,
but with the flesh of his own gaze
that came back warm and milky,
as if it had just given birth to someone.
He was just soil between two skies,
where someone once threw a seed of light.
And he never knew
if that was his body
or just a season of fertility.
THE WEEKLY POISON
When a gaze pierces you like a needle,
a flower called “I” blooms at the wound.
But it’s not a flower,
it’s a weekly poison
that believes it’s eternity.
Tuesday. The poison sleeps.
A crack. Behind it
a laugh with no audience.
A key turning in your own door.
THE MOMENT OF GLOW
He thought he loved,
but what he loved was being chosen
when someone else was blooming.
He wasn’t the scent,
just the breeze that carried
someone else’s flower.
He lingered only long enough
to be mistaken for meaning.
Then, the ground.
Not a metaphor. The firmness under a bare foot.
A green shoot, nameless, a step away.
The silence around it, not an absence of sound,
but the first condition of growth.
WRONG ALTITUDE
Being someone’s reason
doesn’t mean you were their choice.
Moments are big,
not people.
But we believe
we are the bigness.
THE SHADOW STRETCH
What he missed wasn’t the feeling,
but the skin he left hanging
on someone else’s gaze
like a never worn coat.
A person grows while being watched,
just like water rises when it rains.
But no one can live
in the kidney of someone else’s eye.
When euphoria breaks,
what remains is a shadow
eating its own outline,
wondering if it ever had roots.
BORROWED BREATH
The deepest pain
comes from what was never yours,
but felt like it was
because it was breathed into you
from someone else’s mouth.
Now you must cough it up
without sound, without words,
only blood and whisper.
He wasn’t blooming,
someone beside him was.
And he believed
it was his fragrance.
UNDER THE SURFACE
He tried to collect someone else’s thirst
inside his ribs,
as if the water would stay.
But love is not a jug.
Love is a spring.
Flowing beneath the tongue,
and under stone,
even when no one drinks.
LOVE THAT DOESN'T NEED AN AUDIENCE
Love doesn’t need you to shine.
It stays even when you’re mud.
It doesn’t fade when light leaves.
It doesn’t ask for an audience.
It only asks for truth.
THE RETURN
It wasn’t the feeling that vanished,
it was the focus
that’s no longer on you.
You weren’t chosen,
you were in the frame at the right time.
But when gazes move on,
and the light falls elsewhere,
a person returns to themselves.
No spotlight. No applause.
No illusions.
HOW TO STAY WHOLE
If someone sees you as more than you are,
don’t believe them.
Smile.
And stay exactly the size
that needs no one else’s gaze
to hold it up.
If in the dark of your exact size
you find a shoulder,
one that seeks no light in you, fears no shadow,
just this bony warmth beside you,
know
this is how one whole acknowledges another.
No enlargement. No word like enough.
Just the fact of adjacency.
AFTERLIGHT
Love doesn’t say, "You are everything."
Love says, "You are enough."
And it stays.
Even when nothing is happening.
Even when there’s no light.
Even when it’s only you.
No projections.
No need to be bigger.
And then, a hand.
Not extended for a gesture.
Not to lift or be lifted.
Warmth seeking warmth, that’s all.
This touch creates no light.
It creates quiet.
Yes. Here.
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