ALMOST

You are not sudden.

You are simply there.

Warm.

Never entirely reachable.

Summer.

A spark.

Unclaimed.

Later, steam and softened light.

Heat thick enough to blur the world.

Your hands on me, present, certain.

You said it without saying it.

A kiss without weight

Desire without future

I did not argue.

Heaven allowed

because it would not stay.

I knew that

Or Maybe I learned it

when I answered

and nothing followed.

You say we should meet.

We should go there.

We should try that place

you think I’d like.

I say yes.

Once. Twice.

The days close over it.

I do not ask again.

We never plan to meet.

We never quite do not.

Just find another

in narrow seams of time.

Unexpected,

but not surprised.

Midnight once.

Your mouth on mine

as the year turned.

You held me

like something real.

You left it there.

There was always a line.

Drawn lightly

Drawn by you.

I would not cross it alone.

And the trains and cabs.

Short rides.

Conversations not long

but deep enough to matter.

Your knee touching mine.

Words easier

when everything is moving.

Sometimes,

when your voice thins,

when the world presses too hard against you,

I reach.

Not to keep you.

Not to pull you closer.

Just to steady you.

Compassion is safer than want.

Between us

only a space

that hovers.

You fill it with maybes.

There is no tragedy in that.

When your shoulder rests against mine

in the low hum of transit,

the warmth is real.

And I have learned

not to demand more

from what will not grow.

Real

can be enough.

even when it is only

almost.