Serendipitously, Darling

We met serendipitously,
not because the universe announced itself,
but because a concrete planter
held just enough space
for two people not looking
to notice each other anyway.

A week too heavy.
A night already thinning.
Then your voice, unarmed.
Mine answering before I knew why.

Chance opened the door.
Choice walked us through it.

After that, everything learned patience.

Hands at the small of my back
became a language.
High-fives caught and lingered.
Hallways hummed.
Flights waited.
Doors closed softly
and left the air awake.

Distance learned our names
in green and white pulses,
missed calls becoming ritual,
June opening like a promise
that didn’t need to explain itself.

You entered my body
the way fire enters wood,
not to destroy,
but to teach it how to hold heat.

Skin forgot it was a boundary.
Breath forgot where it ended.
Desire learned to kneel
without being asked.

I did not dream of you.
I was marked by you.

Read.
Blessed.
Left intact and undone
at the same time.

Morning steam carried you.
Night folded us into soil and wind.
Time paused.
Then leaned closer.

Darling,

every poem after the first
was a return.
Every touch, a footnote.
Every ache, a margin note
written where mercy lives.

You are not a metaphor.

You are the orbit
my body remembers
even when the world resumes its noise.

We did not stay
the way stories promise.

We inhabited
the way fire does.

Serendipitously at first.
Deliberately after.

And always,
in the tender margin
where the page waits
for the trace of us.