i find you in places
where the light bends strangely
between rooms
between songs
between the little parts of night
that never learned
how to become morning
the desert moves differently
when i think of this
the air against my arms
the dust beneath shoes
the way a thousand bodies
could move around us
and somehow
you still felt louder
i remember dancing
like we had done it before
like movement knew
what our mouths did not
the way your hands felt
the warmth
the hesitation
the little space
before touch becomes touch
and i carry this
in pieces
like glass along a river
smoothed by everything
that tried to break it
we existed in moments
too small for what
i eventually made of them
a night
another night
a place beneath the lights
where everything felt larger
than the time we were given
and somehow months
learned how to grow
from hours
i find this strange
how something can leave
before it ever arrives
how a door can close
inside a room
we never really entered
you told me
i might have to wait
and i think sometimes
about how strange a sentence is
when you give it enough time
how it can become a room
a season
a place to sit
when there is nowhere else
to put your hands
i waited in ways
i never promised i would
not by standing still
but by finding you
in little things
the edge of a song
a man turning his head
the way someone moves
through a crowd
someone asking me to dance
and suddenly
the room becomes another room
i do not know
if memory is kind
or if it simply knows
where to press
because i find you
in places you never stood
in people you know and people you don’t
in music that belonged
to neither of us
and maybe that is what
unfinished things do
they borrow space
they sit quietly
inside other moments
until you mistake recognition
for return
i gave meaning
to the smallness
the look
the touch
the things you said
the things you didn’t
the way your eyes moved
when neither of us
wanted to name anything
and maybe i painted too much
but the colors were there
i only made them brighter
sometimes i think
we were lucky
nothing had enough time
to become ugly
nothing stayed long enough
to lose its softness
it just stayed beautiful
and that thought
hurts differently
because beauty is easier
when it never has to survive
the ordinary
still
i remember the music
how movement can feel
like knowing someone
before knowing them
how two bodies can understand
a language
the mouth never learns
and there are nights
when i swear
some version of us
is still dancing somewhere
not together
not apart
just caught
in that little piece of night
before either of us
had to decide
what it meant
maybe it could’ve been love
or maybe i loved
what happened inside me
when you were near
i have asked myself this
too many times
to believe the answer
would change anything
because you were there
and i was there
and for whatever amount of time
the world became softer
around the edges
i do not ask
for it back
i think that is important
i only wonder sometimes
how something so brief
learned to live
this long
how the wind still knows
which direction to move
when certain songs begin
how i can stand
inside an entirely different life
and still feel
for half a second
the floor beneath us
the lights
your hand
and then nothing
just me
remembering
how easily
you made me feel
like that