Recognition Poem by Allan Crighton

My adorable one -
oddly, even in crowded streets
I seem to walk inside the shape of your absence.
The city moves around me:
buses breathing at corners,
windows gathering rain,
people carrying their ordinary sorrows home—
and still
some hidden part of me
leans toward you.
Evening gathers softly in your hair
as though night itself
had chosen you for sanctuary.
Not because you are perfect.
But because something in your spirit
speaks the same language as mine.
I think of your laughter sometimes
and feel the day grow lighter around its edges.
I think of your hands—
their warmth, their quiet steadiness—
and suddenly the world seems less cold,
less hurried to wound itself.
There are beautiful people everywhere.
That is not the miracle.
The miracle is recognition.
The strange and tender moment
one soul says to another:
there you are.
i have been looking for you.
And yes, banana,
I desire you.
I desire the dusk-soft curve of your mouth,
the dark spill of your hair across pillow and shoulder,
the warmth hidden beneath your skin
like summer waiting beneath the earth in winter.
I dream of tracing, with reverent lips,
the soft geography of your body,
writing a quiet calligraphy of kisses
against the crimson bloom of your mouth.
Your name moves through me
like moonlight tilting upon dark water.
But desire alone is such a temporary fire.
What I long for is stranger.
I want to know the shape of your silences.
I want to learn what grief has taught you.
I want to sit beside you in ordinary hours
while evening gathers slowly at the windows.
I want to hear your thoughts
before sleep overtakes them.
I want to carry your sadness carefully
when the world becomes too heavy upon your shoulders.
I want my soul to become familiar with yours.
Because somehow, without asking permission,
you have entered the quiet architecture of my heart.
And now even loneliness
speaks with your voice.
Sometimes, I think love is simply this:
carrying another person's weather
inside your own sky.
So if one day
our lives should finally fold into each other
like rivers meeting after long distances,
I think it would feel less like collision
and more like remembering.
As though somewhere, long before this life,
your heart and mine
had already promised
not to lose each other again.