The Greatest Form of Intimacy

There are days where you are a poet, and there are days when you are nobody. When you are a poet, they pretend to understand you. When you are nobody, they don’t even try. There are no days where you are neither, so you have learned better than to seek validation.

You grew up reading Plath when they focused on math classes. Your teachers and parents confiscated your books, but that didn’t stop you; you read their books instead. You fell in love with words, and they never left you.

The day you put pen onto paper was the day you met your liberation. They criticized the formation of your letters, but never your thoughts. They could never understand you, so they ceased to try. Their attempts faded, but your words remained. You etched phrases onto your school desk, you scrawled poetry in the margins of your textbooks; and somewhere along the way you knew.

This was your lens, no one else would see it this way.

No one would have the tiniest spark of inspiration and compose a verse that second. No one was that impulsive a poet. No one you knew loved poetry to a point that nothing else mattered. No one would bunk Math class and hide in the washrooms to write. Your classmates knew you as a poet. It was your priority, not theirs.

The English classes your schoolteachers taught bored you, and every other day you’d daydream. The homework wore you out, the schoolbag weighed you down, but you never gave in. You still found yourself sneaking Dickinson into your desk to read when the classes got dreary.

That is until you met her.

The ideal muse. Your head had been swimming with words, thoughts phrases, going around in circles like a frenzied washing machine, but the moment she opened her mouth, everything came to a standstill.

No words, no phrases, no thoughts. Women had left you speechless before, but this woman took your thoughts along with your breath. With her, there was utter silence in your brain, a brain that had always buzzed with sound and thought and syllables. The silence was your high, your dopamine rush.

You looked at her, a whole conversation and as you left, you promptly forgot her face, because it was her brain that mesmerized you.

It was her brain that stuck, and the vivid flashes of her straight eyebrows (arching ever so dramatically at the ends) ceased to mean anything or even compare to the glory that came with her thoughts.

The greatest form of intimacy is to be understood.

The greatest form of intimacy is to be understood.

The greatest form of intimacy is to be understood.

She had an unusual way of looking at you. Like she could see straight into the corners of you and your secrets but chose not to probe further than that you consented to.

She understood.

With her, you were not a poet, you were not a writer, you were not even literate, you could not grasp a pen, you could not form a thought.

People had treated you like an equal all your life but the kind of equal she considered you, made you feel like you were you wrapped around her little finger.

Not even her finger, her brain’s finger.

You’d spent years listening to your friends talk about body numbing orgasms and your body never had that but your brain did. The moment she opened her mouth, you were already gone.

You still can’t think of the words. A mere “I like the way she thinks, and what she thinks” doesn’t quite cut it. You’re far away, but you’re still mentally there. Thinking of deep red wine, gentle sunlight and her.

She already has your mind, your heart, and if she wished for your body, she needn’t ask. You’d give it up willingly the moment she even hinted. With her, you’re not a poet, but you’re not a nobody either. You’re someone, but you don’t quite know who yet, and that doesn’t really matter.

But what does and has to some extent always mattered, is that you are understood.