The Layer Between

A Flutter In the Chest, Then a Word—and Someone Appears

Most often it’s already there.

In writing. Talking. Walking.

A slight forward lean.
Wrinkling between the eyes.
Searching for something—an answer to a question I wasn’t aware of asking.

Not distant—
more like posture,
an assumed face.

The layer between.

—

I watch.

Not what’s being done—
but myself, doing.

From up, and back here.
A slight distance from everything else.

A watch tower.

—

As if this is the only way to manage things.

Don’t the writing, talking, walking already happen on their own?

—

Just the other afternoon—
a moment the watching dropped.

At the end of a long walk.
It had started to rain.

Home now, we finished talking under the carport.

Words still came
though it had gone.

The sound of rain and the conversation held.

—

Watching has its companion questions.

Am I okay?

Am I doing this right?

And another thing—
a fragmenting, a sense of at least two.

Up in here, looking.

An out there.

—

Under the rain,
that drop.

His face—

instantly closer.

A flutter in the chest followed.

Then—

the thought:

fascinating.

—

One word.

And, just like that, someone, again, watching,

who keeps finding it this way.

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Related Reading:

The Place I Run To — Open, then narrow. The move back to safety.

It Comes After — A moment where sequence happens without anyone running it.

Standing On A Stool — The moment a position drops, and the room rearranges.