House of Recognition

objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

I do not love you as one loves the bright things.

a heavy brass key gleaming in sunlight,

the ripe orange peeled open on a plate,

a lace white curtain swaying at the open window.

I love you as one returns to a room that they have not entered for years, but still knows where the light dapples in the corner;

as one touches the spine of a book

and feels every soul who has flipped through it, and been lost in it.

I love you with utter recognition

that arrives before even understanding,

like finding your own name written

in the margin of a forgotten page of an ancient manuscript.

Your presence dances over my goose-bumped skin

the way morning dew covers a field,

visible, delicate, and altering everything, even for a moment.

I love you without properly deciding to.

Without the vital vanity of intention.

Without the immense architecture of promises.

You entered me the way weather enters a season: intentionally, organically,

but until every last tree had changed.

And now I cannot tell where I end and you begin.

Your laughter ring roars in my thoughts

I can practically summon it.

The distance between us has become so slight

that when I remember something devastatingly beautiful,

I do not know whose memory it is.

There are nights when the world grows very still,

and I feel us there together:

as two souls floating together

through the dark fabric of existence,

so close that the buzzing silence around your body

has become part of my silence,

so close that when sleep finally takes me,

it closes its hand around us both.