You watch her from a distance
with that mix of need and arrogance
that some men mistake for desire
as if wanting something gave them a claim to it.

You say her name
like saying it enough times
might close the gap
between you and what never needed you.

You don’t understand
that some bonds aren’t won.

They’re recognized.

Between us
there is no possession.
No pride in having prevailed.

There is something much harder for you to live with:

that when she walks through the door
she doesn’t look around
to see if anyone else is there.

I know the stillness of her eyes
when they stop defending themselves.

The way her silence
fits inside mine
without adjustment.

The warmth of her body letting go,
the tension leaving her shoulders
before she decides to release it.

The body, even the body,
knows first.

And when she says my name
there is no conquest.

There is truth.

The way bone returns
to the bone it already knew.

So there is no contempt.

Contempt requires attention.

And neither of us
has ever had reason
to turn our heads
toward a name
neither of us
needs to remember.

You are the distance
between the one who knocks
and the one already inside.

And that is the wound
your pride can’t close:

what you want,
what you’d become a different man for,

loves me
the way a hand,
falling asleep,
holds without knowing
what it won’t let go.

Not because I keep her.
Not because you lost.

Because the body
already knew.

And while you still dream
of touching her,

she sleeps against my chest
—one hand on my side,
the muscle loose,
the breath that holds nothing back—

long before you arrived,
she had already chosen.

– S. C. –

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