The Dance I Never Finish

I was talking to a friend recently, someone I had gone on a handful of casual dates with. She has seen me dip my toes into the dating world , but always with a passive, passing interest.

I am good at first dates.
I know the right things to say, the rhythms of conversation, the small dances that make the evening smooth.

But somewhere along the way, I lose interest.
Not in the people, not really,
but in the process.

Maybe it is a defense mechanism.
Maybe it is just habit, the long habit of being alone.

The more time passes, the more solitude feels less like a choice and more like the shape of my life.

She asked me why I still try at all, if in the end I always pick solitude over connection.

This is my attempt at an answer:

Between the Silence and the Song

I have learned the art of walking alone,
though whether it is mastery or merely habit,
I cannot always say.

The days weave themselves without much noise,
stitched together by small rituals,
the quiet murmur of coffee shops,
the worn paths of long walks
where conversations are replaced by passing glances.

I answer to no clock but my own.
My work begins and ends where I choose.
I build my life like a tent in the wilderness,
some days firmly staked,
other days fluttering under restless skies.

There is a kind of rhythm in it,
a way of living that expects little
but endures much.
Plans sometimes stretch their arms into next season,
but mostly, I tend to the hours within my reach,
marking the day complete if I rise again to meet another dawn.

I have grown content in this drift,
content in the weaving together of discipline and uncertainty,
carrying just enough weight to remember I am alive.

Yet there are moments,
small as a thread slipping between fingers,
where I remember…

A life shared bends differently than a life borne alone.

Not because it lessens the storms,
but because strength, given and received,
multiplies in the shelter of two.

I know this, not just as one who longs for it,
but as one who could offer it in return,
a hand steady in the gale,
a voice sure when the sky grows dark,
a presence not easily moved.

And though I stand firm in the life I have made,
I carry within me the shape of a life yet to be built,
should the right soul find the way home.