The collection
Exile is not being sent away, it is being forced to live where meaning still exists but permission does not. You feel it in moments that misfire: a laugh arriving too early, a thought addressed to no one, a warmth with no object. The field remains intact. Only access is revoked.
When I say I love you time loosens its belt. The past stops arguing, the future leans closer to listen.
Perhaps this is love now, not the collision of bodies, but the sustained attention we offer each other across impossible space.
Night brings you without apology. You lie beside my thoughts as if you have always belonged there, as if forgetting were a language my body never learned.