Battle Pages

Lost in Translation

I wanted to push you away.
That is where it began.

Not with softness,
not with surrender,
but with that old instinct
to place distance
between myself
and anything that looked
too much like care.

You called me beautiful,
and I did not know
what to do with that.

So I tried
to show you my ugly.
Not all at once.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
A shadow here,
a fracture there,
the unvarnished edge
of a woman
who has survived too much
to trust admiration
when it arrives.

I thought
if you saw the ruin,
you would step back.
I thought
if I handed you
the broken pieces first,
you would understand
the warning hidden in them.

But you kept insisting.

Not loudly.
Not with force.
Just with that quiet,
dangerous steadiness
that made me feel
more visible
than I had planned to be.

You kept looking
as if beauty
and damage
had never been opposites
in your mind.
As if a bruise
could still belong
to something worth kissing.
As if a woman
could show the dark
and not become less
in the telling.

I showed you mine.

My doubt.
My teeth.
My fear dressed up
as indifference.
The sharp little defenses
I wear
when I want to be left
before I can be left.

And somehow,
you showed me yours.

Not perfectly.
Not clearly.
Not in the neat language
people use
when they are certain
of themselves.
But in glimpses.
In pauses.
In the vulnerable shape
of what slipped through
when you forgot
to stay guarded.

That was the intimacy.

Not that we understood
each other completely,
we didn’t.
We misunderstood.
We missed the turn.
We got lost
somewhere between meaning
and timing,
between what was said
and what was meant,
between the heat of truth
and the clumsiness
of translation.

But even there,
something real was happening.

Because what is desire
if not two people
trying to make a language
out of instinct?
What is tenderness
if not the ache
of almost understanding
someone exactly
as they are?

I wanted to push you away.
You called me beautiful.
I offered you the evidence
against it.
And still,
you remained.

Long enough
to make me wonder
if being seen
might not be
the worst thing.
Long enough
to make me answer
with my own undoing.
Long enough
for one guarded heart
to say,
in its own imperfect way:

here.
This is mine.

And for the other
to whisper back:

then here.
This is mine too.

Maybe that is all
we ever were,
a brief exchange
of untranslatable things,
two people standing
at the edge of connection,
offering each other
their most difficult selves,
and mistaking the tremor
for clarity.

Still,
I think there was beauty in it.

In the trying.
In the misreading.
In the fact
that for one impossible moment
I let you see
what I usually keep hidden,
and you did not turn away.

And for one impossible moment,
you forgot to hide as well.

So if there is any ache left,
let it not be for fear.
Let it not be for damage.
Let it not be for the old reflex
that taught you
to close your hands
around every tender thing.

I will never betray
what was placed in mine.
Not your words.
Not your wanting.
Not the softer parts of you
that arrived without armor.

I know how to keep
what is given in trust.
I know how to touch
without tearing.
I know how to hold
what trembles
and not call it weakness.

And if trust is a wounded animal,
let it come back slowly.
Let it come on quiet feet.
Let it find, in me,
no cage,
no spectacle,
no harm.

Only a woman
who saw you,
and did not flinch.
A woman
who could have turned heat
into ruin
and chose instead
to make it gentle.

Because if you ever came near again,
I would not rush you.
I would let the silence
warm between us.
I would let your hesitation
rest against my mouth
until it forgot its own name.
I would let your guarded body
learn, inch by inch,
the sweet unbearable fact
of being safe
while wanting more.

And maybe that is how
trust returns,
not all at once,
but like skin remembering
what a careful hand can do,
like breath deepening
in the dark,
like a pulse
giving itself over
to pleasure
because, at last,
it does not fear
being broken there.