i tango in this
this place i still call mine
a dance inside the mist
the fog carried by the wind
i always knew you somehow
like knowing how many fingers
you held behind your back
before you ever showed me
i make my way
through hallways
that stretch toward my youth
corridors folded with memory
leading me back
to nights i still revisit
when the wind met the sand
and i could feel you there
like glass against stone
twisting
breaking
becoming something new
from the impact alone
that is what we called this
i find myself
sitting quietly in a chair
thinking about a man
i held too closely
while somehow
remaining too far away
and i realize now
i could have
but maybe i also couldn’t have
sometimes those are the same truth
we reach toward what we want
inside a single moment
but what we want in a moment
is rarely what our lives
are asking us to become
if you understand
why footprints disappear
beneath the tide
then you understand me too
because i left my marks there
and then spent years
covering them myself
i plead into closed fists
except for the moments
i understand
why i needed all of this
we paint with time
i close my door
the way i once closed my eyes
hoping the world might shift
if i wished hard enough
hoping somehow
i could bend backward
to when i was twenty-two
when possibility felt endless
and mistakes still looked like beginnings
we create through hardship
i leave it behind
as words on paper
like ice melting
against a hot summer afternoon
beautiful
but never built to last
it disappeared too quickly
and i spent years
asking for things
that were never mine to hold
while quietly receiving gifts
i never thought to ask for
and maybe that has always been
the strange kindness of life
in time we heal
in time i begin to understand
why none of it unfolded
the way i wanted
because it unfolded
the way it needed to
and eventually
if we are patient enough
it always makes sense
not because life explains itself
but because we finally become
the person capable of understanding it