CLOSE ENOUGH TO MISS
I brought two clouds into the same sky
Thinking nothing of the weather they could make
Just introductions, soft as dropped sparks,
catching where I never meant fire to begin.
She learned his name like a song she wanted to finish,
and I watched the tune leave my side of the table
before I had even learned the chorus.
Somewhere between messages and waiting,
I started mistaking silence for possibility,
a slow kind of falling,
the kind you are not even aware yourself.
I came with plans folded neatly in my pocket,
a promise shaped like a simple evening,
just two people, and one direction of attention.
But time has a way of inviting its own guests.
He was there like a missing word returning to a sentence
I didn’t realize was already being written without me.
And suddenly I was ink pushed to the margin,
present, but no longer the line being read.
She spoke to him like gravity had chosen a new center,
and I learned what it is to sit
inside a conversation that forgets your name mid-breath.
I thought I would be understood without words
but understanding was never promised.
Only an illusion of it.
how close someone can stand to you
and still not be looking your way.
R