And It Was Like This
And I confirm it was like this—
we watched her file the exits
under soft administrative light,
blue bureaucracy humming in her head
where everything is labelled
and nothing urgent enough to open.
Did we see her circle them
with a pen
that had forgotten ink was meant for marking?
There was hesitation, yes—
but it moved like heat
more than thought,
like a body returning to itself
in the wrong room.
And then she ran
through fluorescent weather,
through faces too brief
to become evidence of anything.
She ran—
and it turned intimate in a way
motion shouldn’t:
skin almost answered back
without permission.
It happens like this:
a kettle insisting on pressure
inside a kitchen that refuses to understand want.
Something small going incandescent
without being allowed the word desire.
She fell out of the day after that.
Tawny pigtails damp,
rain sliding down her like attention
with nowhere else to go.
We try to name it. Of course we do.
As if naming it
could stop it naming us back.
Sadness doesn’t stay neutral.
It leans in.
It learns rooms
through the shape of avoidance.
Time, she said,
is what happens
when negotiation ends
with what you still want
but won’t hold.
(just a bruise. or two.)
And she looks almost composed
for someone who keeps misplacing herself
between verbs
like disappearance is a habit of touch
you pretend is administrative
so you don’t have to admit
how close everything came.