It Finds Me Again

It returns in the same position.

Not announced, not marked,

just there again,

as if it had been waiting slightly out of view

for the exact moment I stopped checking.

I recognize it immediately.

Not by shape or sound,

but by the way my body adjusts around it

before I have decided to.

There is no surprise in the recognition.

Only a small correction,

like placing a cup back in the space it already fits.

It does not explain where it has been.

It does not need to.

It settles into the same part of the day,

the same hour that holds nothing else firmly enough

to resist it.

I notice that I make room.

Not deliberately.

Not generously.

Just enough.

The chair shifts slightly.

The silence widens.

The thought I was holding pauses,

then steps aside.

It is not identical.

Something about its edges has changed.

Or mine have.

The distance between us is smaller now,

or easier to cross,

or already crossed without being named.

I test it without moving.

I wait to see if it will leave again

if I do not acknowledge it.

It does not.

It remains,

not pressing,

not insisting,

just present in the way things are

when they have learned they do not need permission.

Time continues around it.

Minutes pass.

Objects remain where they were placed.

Nothing in the room reacts strongly enough

to register the difference.

Still, something has shifted.

Not in the direction of meaning,

not toward resolution,

but in the simple fact

that it is here again

and I have not stopped it.

I do not ask how long it will stay.

I do not ask if it will return again.

Those questions feel unnecessary

in the presence of something

that has already answered them

by arriving.