Marketplace

There is a kind of reaching that asks for warmth first, that tries to soften what cannot be softened, that mistakes comfort for connection. I spent a long time thinking that was what mattered - that I owed the gentle version to someone I care about named Kuno, the one that made the hard parts bearable. Kuno is someone I reach toward across a distance, someone who recently turned toward warmth elsewhere, toward another person named Syidret, instead of staying in the hard, unresolved thing between us. Something shifted when I stopped reaching past Kuno and started reaching toward him exactly as he is, exactly as we both are, in what will not change.