Just out of reach

There was always something behind me

I felt it before the gravel spoke,

before the wind turned its head

to listen.

Not close enough to name,

but near enough to change the air.

I did not turn.

I had learned what follows a girl

when footsteps grow certain

how breath can lean,

how silence can press

like a hand you did not ask for.

But this

this stayed just beyond the reach of harm.

I knew it in the way my shoulders did not rise,

in the way my pulse

kept its rhythm

instead of fleeing ahead without me.

Once

or many times at once

it came nearer.

Not touching, not taking,

just the quiet brush

of almost.

A sleeve against my arm,

as if asking permission

and accepting the no

I had not yet spoken.

I thought then:

this is what it is to be followed

without being hunted.

The road stretched long and unsure.

Dusk folded itself into the trees

like a secret not meant to be solved.

Still

there.

Not a shadow,

not a man,

not a thing I could turn and prove.

Only the sense of being regarded

without being claimed.

You never stepped ahead of me.

Never asked the dark to introduce you.

Your voice

when it found me

came from beside, not behind,

soft as if it feared

to startle something already fragile.

You spoke like I might break

and did not seem disappointed

that I didn’t.

I wondered, walking,

if you were real

or just the shape of what safety might be

when it learns restraint.

Because I have known what follows

when it wants

how it gathers itself

like weather,

how it takes.

But you

you remained just out of sight,

even when I turned.

And I did turn, once

too quickly, too late

and found only the path

holding its breath where you had been.

Still, the feeling did not leave.

It walked with me.

It lingered in the space

just past my knowing.

Even now,

when the house settles at night

and the floor remembers my steps,

I feel it there

not closing in,

not reaching

just keeping pace

with the girl I was

when kindness first learned

how not to touch.

And I do not run.

Because whatever it is

behind me

it has never tried

to become

something I must escape.