Two animals,
each sealed
in the dark of
its own skull.
A whole life spent reaching
for the one warmth
they can never quite reach.
And then — sometimes —
the two of them
begin to sync.
There is a wall
at the center
of every love.
You have never been
inside another mind —
two skulls, two feeds,
each guessing the other
from the outside.
Love is the oldest attempt
to close that last half-inch.
lie close enough,
long enough —
and two hearts
that were keeping
different time
begin to argue
their way toward
one beat.
two rhythms.
one tempo.
still — two hearts.
This is not
a metaphor.
Sit close to anyone
who matters —
a friend, a mother,
the dog asleep
on your feet —
and the bodies
start to agree.
heart rates drift
into rhythm. breathing
falls into step.
And the brain that listens
starts to trace the shape
of the brain that speaks.
Slide them
into a scanner,
and the patch of you
that means "me"
lights up for them.
their pain fires
where yours would.
You don't just picture
the other.
You fold a piece of them
into the map of you.
and sometimes
the syncing
makes something.
a third thing —
the bond itself —
made of both of you,
with its own
weather — its own
dark you'll
never enter.
you tend it
from the outside —
the way you tend
everything you love.
Even the ones
closest to your bones
are strangers
you spend a lifetime
learning to read.
The gap does not close
for blood.
It never closes
for anyone.
So what do you do
with a gap
that won't close?
You stay.
You learn them
the slow way —
year over year,
wrong guess
over wrong guess —
until the reading
gets so good
it feels like touching.
you will never
be inside them.
forty years close,
and still —
two.
but watch
the rhythm —
after all that time,
it still
rings in time.
You were never
going to merge.
You were going to
resonate —
two, across a gap
that was never
the distance between you,
but the room
the two of you
learned to dance in.