Sideways

Did you think I didn’t see you smile.

Sideways towards the sun.

There should be a word
for wanting to touch someone
you are not allowed to reach for.

Someone that’s no good for your heart.

But maybe good for your body.

There should be a word.

Something heavier than missing.
Something more honest than longing.

Because longing sounds beautiful.

And this—isn’t.
this is standing three feet away from you
and learning that three feet
can be an entire country
when you are forbidden to cross the border.

I want to kiss you.

God,
I want to kiss you.

Not the kind of kiss
that fixes anything.

Or that heals the hurt.

Or that make your hands safe again.

Not the kind they put at the end of movies
so everyone knows the story turned out okay.

I want the kind
where my mouth remembers yours
before my mind has time
to remind me—

you can’t.

You can’t touch them.
You can’t talk to them.
You can’t reach across this impossible space
and say,

Do you feel this too?

So I become fluent
in not doing things.

I do not text you.

I do not say your name
when it climbs all the way
to the back of my teeth.

I do not let my hand
follow the instinct
to find yours.

I do not tell you
that sometimes I still imagine
what would happen
if we forgot the rules
for five fucking seconds.

Five seconds.

That’s all.

Five seconds
where nobody belongs to the past,
nobody owes the future anything,
and the only thing that exists
is your face
this close to mine.

But five seconds
can ruin everything.

So instead,

I stand here.

Hands to myself.

Mouth full of sentences
I have nowhere to put.

And maybe that’s the cruelest part:

I have so much to say to you
that silence has started
to feel physical.

It sits beside me in the car.

Sleeps on your side of the bed.

It hands me my towel post shower.

Follows me into the tattoo shop.

The bathroom.

Aisle 6 in the grocery store.
and all the ordinary places
where the world has the audacity
to keep happening
without asking whether I’m ready.

I wonder if you know.

If somewhere inside your own silence
there is a version of my name
you aren’t allowed to say either.

I wonder if your hands
ever forget the rules.

I wonder if your mouth does.

But I don’t get to ask.

And love is strange like that.

Sometimes loving someone
is reaching for them.

Sometimes
it is learning exactly how badly
you want to—

and keeping your hands
at your sides.

Submissive.

So I won’t touch you.

I won’t talk to you.

I won’t cross the distance
we’ve been told must exist between us.

But don’t mistake my silence
for absence.

Because there are nights
I still close my eyes
and remember your mouth.

And for one impossible second,

there are no rules.

No distance.

No before.

No after.

Just you.

Just me.

And the kiss
I keep having to swallow.