seduction is dead

my mouth hasn’t shut up about you
not since the first almost
that electric pause before skin becomes language

we used to write like that, didn’t we?
ink spilling what the body couldn’t hold
fingers blotted with ink
sentences trembling with the risk of being read
now desire arrives as a notification
glowing, ambiguous
something to be opened or ignored

we swipe
as if longing were frictionless
as if heat could be generated by glass

but i have felt it elsewhere
in the quiet ceremony of my hand
finding the small of your back
in the unnoticed kindness
of a glass refilled before thirst speaks
in the way someone says your name
like it has weight

seduction is not a strategy
it's a threshold

a lip grazed by a thumb
a sentence that risks too much
i’m always thinking about kissing you

it lives in the space before certainty
where bodies hesitate
just long enough to become aware
of their own shadow

we have made everything legible
timestamps, read receipts
the autopsy of punctuation
we call this clarity
but it is only distance in disguise

because real wanting
is clumsy
inefficient
impossible to retract

it smells like skin
sounds like laughter spilling too loud
feels like time slowing its pulse
to watch two people decide
whether to fall
face and heart sore from smiling

i want the unbearable closeness of it
the moment where breath forgets itself
where the world narrows
to the inch between mouths

not the message that says “maybe”
not the silence that says “guess”
but the simple, devastating arrival:
i’m here