When Your Face

I begin with the thought

that every glance carries a weight,

sometimes feather light,

sometimes the pull of an ocean.

Your eyes carry both.

I lean into the strangeness of longing,

how it bends time,

how a second stretches so far

I could build a life inside it,

and still call it waiting.

The air between us is thin,

not fragile, but charged,

like the static before rain,

like a string pulled taut

but never breaking.

And then shift,

the silence folds open.

I am no longer a body reaching,

but a soul breaking past its ribs,

falling into you,

where hesitation dissolves,

and breath becomes promise.

It is no small thing

to want with such clarity,

to risk the tremble of hands

against the certainty of touch.

Yet here I am,

the distance undone,

my mouth already learning your name

in a language softer than speech.