Hidden Intimacy

How arrives such moments,

not only in the hush of lovers’ breath,

but in the sudden recognition between a hand and the rough bark of a tree,

skin learning the patience of centuries.

Intimacy is the whisper of chalk against a blackboard,

the way dust clings to the air like a secret refusing to leave.

It is the silence between two strangers sharing the same bench,

their shadows overlapping like spilled ink on pavement.

There is intimacy in the pause before a violin bow touches string,

in the tremor of anticipation that feels like a bird hovering just above water.

There is intimacy in the way rain negotiates with rooftops,

each drop a diplomat between sky and stone.

Why do many confine intimacy to bodies,

when even the rusted hinge knows the closeness of door and frame,

and the moon rehearses its nightly dialogue with tide?

Intimacy is not possession,

it is the fragile contract between breath and silence,

between memory and forgetting,

between the eye and the sudden flight of a hawk.

And sometimes, it is stranger still,

the quiet recognition between a book and the dust that settles upon it,

as if the two were old friends revisiting the same story.

But most unexpected of all…

The intimacy of a spoon with the mouth of a cave,

both hollow, both waiting,

both knowing the shape of emptiness as a kind of embrace.