The moon is a lazy voyeur—
peeking through blinds,
draped in the sweat of our second chances.
You smell like the end
of something I never wanted to survive.
I was stitched together by quiet women,
ghosts who pressed sugar
into the mouths of screaming boys.
They told me:
Love slow.
Love foolish.
Love like you’ve got time—
but lose it anyway.
You enter like a hum,
your voice the color of dusk
if dusk could ache.
Your hands—
cartographers mapping
what even I forgot I buried.
I was a kingdom before you.
Now I’m just a hallway
that leads to your name.
I let you in,
not like a guest
but like a storm
I prayed for in secret.
You keep tenderness
in your back pocket,
pulling it out
when the world gets too cruel
for my soft armor.
And I—
I learn how to unbuckle myself,
shed the versions of me
that flinch when kissed.
We don’t speak in futures.
We whisper in nows.
We dance in the dark
watched by our regrets.
You pour more of you into me
like fire,
like you were made to undo
the silence in my bones.
And baby,
I roll into you like the night does the sea—
slow,
certain,
drenched in God.
And wanting
nothing
but more.
He’s nobody.”
That’s what she said—
not his name,
just a dismissal,
light enough to disappear.
She said, not him,
said don’t worry,
her voice a feather—
barely touched the air.
And I,
tired of questions
that came back wearing silence,
believed her.
Of course I did—
softening my doubt,
until it resembled
something like trust.
But Nobody
had a name,
had salmon for dinner,
had good conversation,
had a couch that would soon
know her shape.
She went to his house,
like a gallery at night—
quiet,
unsure if she was going
to worship or to steal.
Slipped through Nobody’s
door at dusk,
perfume trailing behind,
like the ghost of a promise
that already knew
it was broken.
Sank into his couch,
pressed lips like a secret
I was never meant to know—
with a language
she promised never to learn.
That is the part I cannot forget.
Not the sin—
but the ease.
The quiet want.
The learning something
I'll never teach her.
Came home,
like she’d been with nobody.
Stripped down like memory—
Laid beside me,
skin to skin.
I mistook the silence
for intimacy,
for something sacred—
not aftermath..
and held her,
unaware of the forgiveness
leaking out of me.
I hate how soft
the truth was
when it finally sat beside me—
legs crossed,
quiet,
kind.
I remained—
smoked the silence,
sifted through the ashes
of what I’d mistaken
for devotion.
And somewhere
between
“he’s nobody”
and
“I wasn’t there long”—
I felt myself fading
into someone
who no longer cares
about nobodies.
She was peeling one-
slow, methodic, like it hurt her.
Like the skin was someone
she'd loved once.
Her fingers trembled
in that way sorrow makes holy-
the devotion of keeping it together.
How women are taught
to cry like saints:
quiet, citrus-sweet,
and alone.
The bench was wide enough
for two.
The sun was kind.
The world, indifferent.
In another world,
I might've sat beside her,
offered a tissue
or a scripture.
But in this one,
we make churches of avoidance.
We pray by not interfering.
Her eyes-
black galaxies
rimmed in salt-
met mine
for a moment too long.
And I swear
the universe
cleared its throat.
I learned young-
eye contact was a gamble.
Too long, and people got nervous.
Too short, and they’d think I was hiding something.
I was.
Mirrors were unkind.
They fractured me before the world had a chance.
One eye drifting east,
the other one loyal.
Betrayal in every reflection.
I knew my angles.
How glass twisted me.
How symmetry was a privilege I would never know.
Why won’t it just look straight?
The first time I heard the word lazy,
it wasn’t about my hands,
or my legs,
or my heart.
Adults were careful.
Careful with looking,
careful with asking,
careful with the way their pity recoiled
when they turned back around to face me,
realizing I was indeed speaking to them.
Kids weren’t so kind.
Photographers:
“Look into the lens.”
As if I hadn’t been trying.
As if I hadn’t spent my whole life wrestling my own gaze.
At night,
I’d squeeze my eyes tight-
so tight, my nose curled.
And my cheeks hurt.
I’d hold them there,
as if maybe, just maybe,
by morning
they would wake up
and finally agree.
I tell myself I have let it go—
opened my fists,
let the weight slip through my fingers
like breath on glass—
there, then gone.
But forgiveness does not stitch the wound,
does not erase the past,
only teaches you how to carry it.
The scar stays—
tight in the cold,
raw in the rain.
I said I forgave the silence
for making me small,
for making me afraid,
for teaching me
that being unseen
was the safest way to survive.
I said I forgave the world
for pressing me into a shape
I never chose,
for asking me to shrink
when all I wanted was to expand.
I said I forgave myself
for mistaking endurance for strength,
for burying my voice
before it could rise,
for believing silence
and suffering
was the price of manhood.
But still, it burns—
not like fire,
but embers under ash,
a heat waiting.
If forgiveness is freedom,
why does it still press against my ribs?
Why does it settle in my chest—
tight, coiled—
waiting to be named?
I have forgiven.
But forgetting?
Forgetting is a ghost—
a shadow of remembering,
with nowhere to go,
asking to be let back in.
Once, I stood still under the sun—
let it press its fire into my skin,
let it weigh me down,
a command to endure.
But today, I run where the water sings.
Barefoot through cold laughter,
water lifting into chorus,
bright and quick as joy,
wrapping my ankles, pulling me back
to something younger,
something unafraid to break the surface.
The sun is still there,
but today, it is only light—
not a burden, not a weight,
not the slow burn of too much time,
not heat settling in my ribs like dust.
Just warmth,
watching me play.