a very late and sinuous response

when did you realize you have fallen in love?

when i watched myself slowly peel off the mask i had welded to bone - the one i wore for the world, for survival, for strangers who never cared. and there i stood, soul-bare, trembling, unclothed in front of you - not in body, but in everything that matters more.

when secrets stopped obeying. when they clawed their way out of me in the form of trembling confessions and quiet sobs about what i've done to this flesh - and still, you stayed. you stayed. and you smiled like you weren't afraid of my ruin.

when i started dreaming up things i wanted to do to you - things i once scoffed at, mocked for their softness. but now they arrive like hunger in the chest - midnight baking, your hands in mine at grocery stores, your legs tangled in mine during thunderstorms. 

when your name, spoken aloud in an empty street, made me feel like a living spell had been cast - not to summon death, but to resurrect me. 

when i imagined us half-clothed in the kitchen, steam curling in the windows, and the rain beating down like applause on the roof we now call home. and our bodies, no longer strangers to touch, moved like planets realigning. 

when heaven itself leaned down and i felt, for the first time, that i could drop the blade. i could stop running. that if i died in such a patroclus way, cold and alone beneath the soil, you'd weep like achilles - unashamed, godless, magnificent in grief.

when words failed me because they were too small for what i carried - no language could measure how much of you lived in me; how much of me had disappeared and reassembled with your fingerprints inside every bone.

when i chose life, not in some poetic metaphor, but truly. i chose to stay, and it wasn't for me. it was for you. for us.

and when i imagined one day taking you to church - not for salvation, but for offering. when i saw myself kneeling at your feet, whispering my sins while you held the blade to my throat - not to kill, but to receive.

and i said, good god, take my life. it was always yours anyway.