The Distance

2:26 PM

I’ve loved across coordinates.

Until the coordinates started mapping me back.

Thin, folded, patient, like something archived.

At first it was a trick of time,

Minutes plus messages.

Proof of life disguised as affection.

Then the lag arrived.

And my heart, too literal for fiction,

mistook delay for verdict.

I failed in several languages:

love, work, sleep, conversation.

Even the room of myself

hung a sign: temporarily unavailable.

The mind drafted its quiet theorem:

if this continues, I won’t.

So I changed the equation.

I left the comfortable shape

that no longer fit,

learned a new grammar for staying,

Let failure become measurement, not identity.

This place taught me slowness.

How light arrives by degrees.

How a kitchen can mean survival

without declaring home.

When the world stopped,

everyone met the silence I already knew.

Some called it despair.

I called it recognition.

I rebooted in small steps.

Books, breath, lists,

until color returned to the screen.

Now the distance is smaller.

I can stand inside my life

without asking permission.

When the world heals,

we’ll walk out laughing.

But for now, this is enough:

I am here, with me.

Let me love this version.

Not as a quote,

but as repetition.

again and again,

to the horizon,

and quietly beyond it.

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