Excerpt II
He had once believed that distance was a failure of courage. That if he were braver, or simpler, or less exacting with himself, closeness would arrive naturally — like warmth, like certainty, like the inevitable result of wanting something badly enough.
Time had corrected him.
What he felt now was not avoidance, but calibration. An instinct honed slowly, painfully, to recognize when nearness would ask more than it could ever return. He had learned this not through theory, but through repetition — the slow erosion of small expectations, each one harmless on its own, each one leaving something unrecovered.
There were moments, still, when memory pressed itself forward uninvited. A look held too long. A silence misread as invitation. The quiet hope that understanding might emerge without having to be spoken aloud. These recollections arrived without drama, settled briefly, then receded — like rain against glass, observed but untouched.
He did not resent this restraint. If anything, it felt like proof of survival. Desire remained, intact but disciplined, no longer allowed to masquerade as destiny. He had come to prefer the ache of un-acted longing to the damage of false arrival.
Somewhere beyond the room, life continued to offer itself generously, indiscriminately. He did not doubt that connection was possible. Only that it was owed.
And so he remained — attentive, composed — guarding not his solitude, but the fragile clarity that had finally taken its place.