Before She Turns
She does not turn,
not yet
as if the body knows
to look
is to surrender.
And love
if that is what this is
refuses the dignity of a name.
It does not arrive.
It infiltrates.
Like music through a wall
too thin to protect you,
it enters the spine first,
not as touch,
but as recognition.
You thought it would be light.
You thought it would open
like mercy,
forgiving,
something you believed
you could survive.
But no.
It is closer to smoke,
something already burning
without permission.
A hunger
that knows exactly…
But a hunger
that knows
where to place itself
to undo you.
The air alters.
Still no touch.
Only that unbearable proximity,
so precise
it begins to map you
from the outside in,
a line drawn
without mercy,
without contact,
without asking.
You could turn.
You don’t.
Because restraint
is the last illusion of control.
And something in you
older than thought
is already leaning toward it.
You understand now:
love is not gentle.
It is ostinato.
What it finds, it enters.
What it enters, it changes.
What it changes
does not return.
And still
she does not turn.
Because she knows
the moment she does
it will not be love that meets her,
but something more ruthless,
more intimate
something that has been waiting
not for her body,
but for her consent
to disappear into it.
Image and Poetry © Gesso Cocteau
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