Interdigitate

there are people
you will never connect with directly —
not for lack of trying,
not because something broke,
but because of geometry.
their edges shift
the way coastlines do
when you get close enough:
what looked like a smooth curve
turns into a thousand smaller problems,
each one requiring a piece
you don’t have.
and there are people
who fit okay —
close enough to pass
in the dim light of a party,
a shared corner held for a moment
before the table gets jostled
and you drift apart
without either of you
marking it as a loss.
but then there is this:
the one where the curve
meets the curve
without persuasion,
where nothing has to be
held in place
while the glue dries.
It’s as instinctual as handwriting, and the strange mercy of it
is that through her
I am connected to people
I will never touch directly —
which means somewhere
at the far end of the table
is a piece I am connected to
through every piece I love —
and we will never share an edge,
which is its own kind of tenderness:
to be held at a distance
by the very thing
that holds me close.