Verona

"He's a broken man," she told me,

without turning fully, just enough to make sure I heard.

But my soul, without hesitation,

rejected the diagnosis.

I recognised him.

Like me,

tending to the same ache but in a different form,

A little more lost than he intended to be.

And still,

somewhere beneath the rock of numbness,

buried under the fear and noise,

drowning in distraction -

he held hope.

The knowing that one day

he will find his way back to who he knows himself to be.

I heard it

in the unguarded softness floating in his voice

his eyes lost in the water falling from the cliff,

like something returning to its truest form,

as if it carried an answer.

Or a name.

A part of himself

he’d been chasing without knowing.

As if he’d felt the absence of something

but couldn’t name it,

only look for. it

He spoke for a while,

but it wasn’t the words I heard.

It was everything between them

I felt

wrapping around me

with a familiarity I couldn't explain.

He stood lonely

in a sea of lust and admiration,

beloved and unseen.

Something real.

A quiet depth.

A truer part of him,

buried beneath a loud, flirtatious charm,

all sparkle and ease,

crafted to distract,

to fool the world into seeing

confidence,

seduction,

joy,

Happiness.

Though anxious,

I felt an unusual sense of comfort

in the silent moments between the chaos.

The fixated looks held for a second too long,

skin touching longer than an accident.

It was recognition.

Camaraderie.

Unconscious. Unintentional.

A nod as we crossed each other on our own paths.

In passing, just for a breath,

we saw the same flame beneath the mask.

As if to let the other know:

We will be okay.

There was a knowing we didn’t speak,

subtle and unacknowledged,

like a secret we couldn’t name.

I felt the him

he couldn’t hold.

And he saw the me

I was afraid to be.