Before I ever had the word for it,
the wanting was already there—
somewhere in the restlessness,
in the particular stare
I threw at men who carried themselves
with a certain weight.
Not their money. Not their ease.
The way they moved through fate.
I was ten,
pressed against the passenger window,
watching the city fracture past
in hard and brittle shadow,
thinking: I will live inside that center,
not around its rim.
I had no word for it then,
but something in me swam.
It was not greed—I’ve known enough of that to recognize its face.
It was not ego dressed in purpose,
claiming space that was not its.
It was something more like northward,
an instinct pulling me
toward the center of wherever
the air grew thick with consequence.
In summers of my formation,
I studied how authority
settled into certain men like sculpture—
the subtle bend of deference
when someone crossed a threshold,
and the room rearranged itself around his stride.
I collected these observations
with the hunger of a student,
devoted and precise.
Now I possess a dozen words for it,
and none of them sufficient.
Conquest approaches closest
but still only seizes fragments.
What I wanted was the totality
of a life directed by my own hand—
where intention and outcome
finally, irrevocably agreed.