I want to be precise about this—
imprecision is the easy out.
It’s not the absence of the feeling,
not the rerouting of caring into somewhere cold,
not the deliberate withdrawal of the self
from the proximity of you.
It’s the overhaul
of the mechanism that expresses it.
The blown circuit.
The demonstration gone quiet
while the generator
still hums somewhere underneath the silence.
It’s not gone.
It’s underground.
It’s finding its compliance
with the gravity of a year that cost more than I had.
The opposite of love isn’t cold—
it’s the back turned, the door,
the chosen departure into nevermore.
That’s absence. That’s the actual leaving.
But I’m still here.
In the room.
Answering present
at partial capacity,
at the adjacent of the full version,
showing up without the nomenclature
of the alive and lit and turned toward you entirely.
Quietly.
Sincerely.
I care about you the way a wall cares for what it bears—
through decades of holding without applause,
through centuries of weight
carried without acknowledgment.
I care in the architecture.
In the cause of staying.
In the daily fact of continued proximity.
I care.
It just can’t be heard
at the velocity you’re used to.
The volume’s in the floor.
The caring’s in the staying.
Not the back turned and the door.
Not the deliberate departure.
Not the nevermore of the chosen gone.
I’m here.
Quietly.
Sincerely.
The wall holds.