I cannot say when I fell in love with you —

was it that first time, from the big window near the steps,

the light falling just so,

and you, standing there,

not knowing you were being seen?

When our eyes met,

did you feel it too —

that small arrested moment,

the world pausing

mid-breath,

something unnamed

passing between us

like weather?

Or was it the slow accumulation of days — 

the passing, the passing, the passing by, 

until you were no longer 

someone I saw but someone I carried?

You are in my essence now. 

Every other man feels paraya to me — foreign, elsewhere, not-you — and you are mine, I know it, the way the body knows its own wound,

but you are far. So far that mine is just a word I hold in an empty hand.