The Donkey From Cape Town

Not in the dramatic, key-my-car kind of way. In the far more inconvenient way of becoming the best part of everything.

A mountain view and an ocean sunset used to be enough. Now my first thought is that I can’t turn and watch you watching it.

Sunday chores are just chores. Jokes are just jokes. Stories are just stories. Opinions are simply statements waiting to die quietly in the air without your stubborn insistence on being wrong.

And my autistic rambles about boats, shipwrecks, or whatever useless piece of information I’ve been carrying around all week suddenly seem rather pointless without you sitting there, already knowing half of it, and still letting me talk because you know I enjoy emptying my brain into someone else’s hands.

You’ve ruined things for me.

No, do not ask me whether she loved me back.By then it will not matter. Perhaps it never did.

Love is not always a door that opens. Sometimes it is a room you learn to live inside alone, and still you water the flowers.

So place her photograph in my pocket.

Because when they ask me in heaven, and surely they will ask men like me, men who arrived carrying too much weather in their chest.

Why were you kind when life gave you reasons not to be?

I will take out her picture.

The edges worn from years of being touched in secret.

And I will say: Her.

She never belonged to me. And perhaps that is why I loved her so carefully. There was no promise to protect me from disappointment. No future waiting with its hands open. She had her own orbit, her own mornings, her own life that continued beautifully beyond the borders of my wanting.

But tell me

Since when has love needed permission to change a man?The sea does not stop touching the shore because the shore does not love it back. I loved her in the quiet way wounded things survive: without announcement, without demand.

And because I loved her, I became gentler.

I spoke softer.

I learned that strength was not conquest, but restraint. Not possession, but reverence.

There are arguments I walked away from because I thought of the kind of man she deserved to exist in the world, even if not beside her.

There are cruelties I buried because loving her made ugliness feel embarrassing.

No, she was never mine. But the strange thing about love is this: It asks nothing of ownership. Only transformation.

So when heaven asks me why I tried so hard to become good, I will show them her photograph and say: “She owed me nothing.”

“She chose another life. Another hand to hold. Another story.”

“And still

I loved her.

And still

No single moment accounts for it. There was no declaration, no visible turning. Only a gradual absence where presence had previously been assumed. By the time it was noticed, the process was already complete.

He avoids those who see. Their capacity to identify and define presents a risk. Under observation, indistinct elements acquire form, and once formed, they cannot be returned to their prior state. He has adjusted accordingly.

He now associates primarily with those who do not inquire. In these conditions, he is not required to specify himself. He is permitted to remain partial, which is to say, unchallenged.

This arrangement has proven stable.

There is, however, a persistent irregularity.

The subject in question remains alive.

This introduces a complication without offering a resolution. A termination would have simplified the structure. Instead, the subject continues independently, having reorganized her circumstances in such a way that he is no longer included. No explicit exclusion was issued. The effect is nevertheless complete.

He has reviewed the matter and found no fault.

There is nothing to contest. No error in judgment, no misapplication of principle. The exclusion is coherent. It holds under examination.

What follows is a condition resembling loss, though it cannot be formally classified as such. No object has been removed. No event has occurred that would justify designation. Access has simply ceased.

This is difficult to process within existing terms.

Those capable of seeing would attempt to resolve the discrepancy by naming it. They would apply language and, in doing so, finalize the condition. Once finalized, the subject would be expected to accept and proceed.

This step has not been taken.

Accordingly, further withdrawal has been implemented. Distance from observers reduces the likelihood of definition. Without definition, the condition remains technically unresolved.

This is the current state.

No conclusion has been reached.

But removal is never clean. It is not the swift mercy imagined in theory. It lingers. It resists. Some things do not burn the way they should. They blacken, they crack, they smoke but they remain.

And there it stands still.

An immovable stone house, set firm in the chest. Not abandoned, not broken, lived in. Furnished with memory. Warm with the echo of presence. Every attempt to tear it down only bloodies the hands that try.

Fire cannot take stone.

You once called me a hopeless romantic. You said it gently, almost like you were forgiving me for it. But I don’t think you understand what really happened to me.

Romance suggests choice. It suggests a man wandering into love like a pleasant garden.

That isn’t what this was.

I saw you once and something in me answered before I had time to think. Before logic, before caution, before any sensible voice could intervene. Just a quiet certainty rising from somewhere deeper than thought:

Yes. That one.

You call me poetic too, but that’s another misunderstanding. I’m not creating anything when I speak about you. I’m only trying to translate something far bigger than I am. The truth is embarrassingly simple.

You are the art.

I am only the man standing in front of it, trying to explain why it moves him.

Sometimes you speak about a small and peaceful life. A house. A white picket fence. Something stable, ordinary, good. And I suspect, though you are too kind to say it, that somewhere in your mind you doubt that I am the man who belongs in that picture.

Maybe you see the storms in me.

You would not be wrong.

But what you don’t see is that in my mind you have already become the whole landscape. Not just the fence, not just the house all of it. The garden. The light. The quiet warmth in the windows at night.

Princess.

Sola.

Sola like girasol. A sunflower.

A flower that does not debate with the sun. It does not question the distance or wonder whether it deserves the light. It simply turns toward it because something in its nature demands it.

Thats the closest explanation I have.

I did not choose to love you.

I simply saw you.

And something in me turned.

And it seems, no matter how hard I try to face another direction, it still does.

So I understand now what I am.

Not a man who found love.

Not to one wound,

but to many.

One hundred and forty-six stitches

written into flesh, some upon the face,

some binding the arm, others driven through the long road of the left leg.

And the skin was gathered together

thread by thread,

as men gather torn nets from the sea.

Yet still the word was spoken:

Run no more.

The decree fell heavy

like a stone laid over a grave.

But something within refused the burial.

For there is a stubborn fire that does not bow to verdicts.

It does not kneel when the body is numbered among the broken.

And though the flesh was cut

and the bone struck down,

the greater wound walked unseen.

For the battlefield of the mind is a cruel country.

There the voice of doubt builds its temples.

There the whisper rises like a prophet of ruin:

You are finished.

You are ruined.

You will not rise again.

Yet still the heart made war against it.

Not gently. And not quietly.

With teeth set

and fists closed around the promise

that the body was made for movement,

and the ground was made to answer the foot.

Let the scars be counted.

Let the stitches be numbered.

A hundred and forty-six

scattered across face, arm, and leg

like the marks of battle upon an old shield.

Still the final word is not given to the wound.

For something fierce remains

a stubborn breath,

a defiant pulse,

a spirit that will not repent

the waters were divided.

Sea from land.

River from river.

Each commanded to know its course

and keep it.

And it was said:

Let the current go where it must.

Let it empty itself into whatever basin receives it.

Let it be fruitful.

Let it forget the spring from which it came.

But there is a river

that refuses dispersion.

It has tasted one ocean

and calls no other holy.

Storms have passed over it.

Wind has pressed new horizons into its surface.

Foreign moons have tugged at its skin

with silver hands.

Still it bends back

toward the first salt.

Other seas open themselves

broad, unguarded,

generous with their depths.

They whisper:

All waters are welcome here.

Drown and be relieved.

The river stands at their edge,

swollen with ache,

ashamed of its narrowness.

It could spill.

It could break covenant with the shoreline.

It could mistake the heat of collision

for consecration.

Yet the current will not lie.

It recoils from borrowed tides.

It hardens against easy harbors.

It withholds its flood

from every altar not named.

Call it pride.

Call it famine.

Call it a stubborn miracle or a curse.

Still

when gravity commands surrender,

when flesh calls for rain,

when night pleads for lesser waters

the river does not bow.

It circles the same deep.

It aches toward the same horizon.

It keeps faith with a coast

that may never receive it again.

And so it remains

unspent,

unmoved,

where cold had kept the law.

And the ground obeyed.

It split.

It rose.

It answered.

Dormancy was called emptiness

and touched without covenant.

Light lingered,

and what was buried remembered its name.

Sap climbed.

Fields opened.

This was not rebellion

this was design.

Then restraint was demanded

after ignition.

Silence after awakening.

Winter, called wisdom.

Let it be written:

to stir the fertile and deny the harvest

is not mercy.

It is theft.

For once abundance is revealed,

return is violence.

And the land will bear the mark of it

not as longing,

That’s the trick. That’s the curse.

I can lift my life when it gets heavy.

I can stitch myself back together with numb hands

and call it healing.

I can be hungry and not complain.

Lonely and not ask.

Bleeding and still show up.

I’ve learned how to need very little.

How to become efficient with pain.

But there’s this one small thing—

so small it shouldn’t matter—

and it ruins me.

I can’t make it happen.

I can’t build it.

I can’t earn it by being better, or quieter, or stronger.

I can’t drag it into existence through effort.

It just stands there,

untouched by discipline,

unimpressed by resilience.

And that’s what breaks me.

Not the big losses.

Not the obvious wounds.

It’s that the only thing I can’t do for myself

is the only thing I actually want.

So I keep standing here, capable of everything,

That’s who I am.

Except you.

I won’t chase you.

I won’t touch you.

I won’t pretend.

But I carry you

like a splinter I refuse to pull out

because at least the pain proves

you were real.

Mi girasol.

If I could let you go, I would.

I can’t.

the way the river holds the light

but never keeps it,

just lets it pass

like that’s enough.

I’m sitting where the sun finds me easy,

feet in the water,

boat tied loose

not going anywhere,

not sinking either.

The river moves on without asking

if I’m ready.

It always does.

Smooth, certain,

like it knows something I don’t.

I see it in the wake

left behind by other people’s boats,

how it sparkles for a moment

then forgets itself,

going flat again.

There’s a board resting nearby,

rope coiled like a thought I won’t finish.

I can picture the pull,

the standing,

the balance that comes after fear.

I see it clearly.

That clean line between falling

and staying up.

That brief, bright yes

the water gives some people.

But the boat idles.

The rope stays dry.

And I stay right here,

sun on my shoulders,

watching certainty skim past me

without ever slowing down.

I see it

the ease,

the joy,

the way it could be mine.

I just can’t seem

to step into it,

can’t make the river choose me back.

So I let the sun do what it does best

warm me without promises

and I learn the shape of wanting

without reaching.

I see it.

And somehow,

Same days, different dates.

So choosing someone should feel like lightning

sudden, unavoidable, impossible to ignore.

Don’t they?

not from gyms or grit or choice,

but from life handing you its roughest edges

and telling you to hold them anyway.

A father made of stone,

a mother drifting like weather,

and a little girl waiting alone at school

long after the bell decided to give up.

I wasn’t there,

but that story lives in me

like a bruise that never quite fades.

Your eyes are deep

not just the pretty kind people comment on,

but the kind that carry storms

and still somehow choose to shine.

Your heart is deeper still,

a place that builds joy out of scraps,

and hands it out like it costs you nothing.

But here’s the truth I haven’t said aloud:

I don’t want you strong.

Not like that.

Not the kind of strong you had to become

because the world refused to fucking hold you

when you needed holding most.

I want to be strong for you.

Strong enough that you can be soft.

Strong enough that you can let the weight

slide off your shoulders

and stop clenching your words

like they’re armor you can’t take off.

I want to give you a place

where you don’t have to brace for impact,

where you can unravel without apology,

where being weak isn’t danger

it’s permission.

You’ve carried enough.

Let me carry some of it.

Not because you can’t,

but because you shouldn’t have to

every fucking day.

And if the world ever tries

to make you strong like that again,

I’ll stand between you and that lesson,

And your dragon God, that tattoo

it follows me like a creature that slipped off your skin

and learned the blueprint of my ribs.

Negative-space smoke,

breathing where nothing should breathe.

Your smile still arrives in pieces:

that little upward tug,

like you’re negotiating with joy,

before the teeth appear and everything brightens.

I feel it before I see it, even in memory.

And your laugh echoes like it has a will of its own

filling rooms you’ve never stepped into,

shaking dust from thoughts I thought were settled.

It’s loud, it’s obnoxious,

and somehow it softens everything it breaks open.

You carry gentleness like contraband,

hidden under layers life tried to sharpen.

I see it in the way you stand,

in the things you don’t say,

in the way your stare disarms me every damn time.

It’s the only gaze that ever made me shift on my feet,

like the floor moved first.

Even your wrong bolognaise haunts me

a harmless misstep,

turned to a spell I can’t undo.

It loops in my mind for no good reason

other than it’s yours.

And I’ve tried

I’ve tried to scrape you from the walls of my head,

tried to air out the rooms you still walk through,

but you linger like a scent that doesn’t match the season.

You move in me like unfinished weather,

like a tide that forgot how to leave.

I tell myself to let go.

But you’ve settled into the quiet places

the in-between breaths,

the after-sound of my heartbeat,

the soft spaces you were never meant to find.

You’re the echo I can’t outrun,

the ghost I never meant to keep,

the thought that refuses to loosen