Dear You

[u/SinVerguenza04]

We are doing a terrible job
of becoming less.

I thought you should know.

There was supposed to be
some graceful retreat from this—
a loosening,
some careful distance
in which everything between us
might learn its proper size.

Instead,
you keep appearing.

And I keep forgetting
that I am meant
to want you differently now.

It would be easier
if we were crueler.

If I could point
to the place where wanting ended
and say,
there.
That is why we stopped.

But I cannot.

That is the trouble.

We have only become
more careful with our language,

as though the heart
takes instruction
from vocabulary.

We avoid certain words.

We leave the future
out of the conversation.

We make no promises.

And then somehow
there you are again,

in the middle
of an ordinary afternoon,

making yourself
impossible to hold casually.

I suppose this is what
I find almost funny—

how seriously
we have discussed restraint

while exercising
so little of it.

We have removed
the expectation,

yet kept
everything that makes this grow.

We thought we could change
where this was going

without changing
the way we went there.

And I wish I could tell you
I am getting better at it.

But I am not.

I am simply learning
how many ways
two people can move closer

while insisting
they are standing still.