The One in the Elsewhere

Why do you taste so sweet,
not like sugar,
but like the soft glow of a memory
pressed into the tongue of a life
I can’t quite remember living?

You appear draped in a black coat,
the color of warm breath against winter air,
a shade that flickers
between ember and silence.
A November borrowed
from a world that keeps forgetting me,
yet you wear it
as if time tailored it just for you.

When the veil thins
and the other universe pulls me in by the ribs,
you’re already there,
shapeless, faceless,
but impossibly present,
like a pulse I’ve known longer
than I’ve known myself.

The moment you’re near,
the atmosphere shifts.
Tiny details bloom,
thorns magnified into amber constellations,
water trembling in thin silver threads,
the riverbed humming
as if the earth is tuning itself
to our frequency.
Even the darkness seems to breathe differently,
carrying its quiet luggage
through the current beneath our feet.

And it isn’t love,
or maybe it is,
but love in its rawest language,
before names, before bodies,
before the world decided what it should mean.
It moves through me
like warm honey poured over the edges of a wound,
sweeter than truth,
sharper than longing,
filling cracks I didn’t know
were hollow.

I feel myself glitch,
a dream-made animal
slipping between versions of reality,
too aware,
too open,
as if every emotion has been lifted
into sharper resolution
only for you.

Some days, traces of you cling to me,
color smudged at the edges of my thoughts,
a warmth blooming behind my sternum,
a gravity that tilts the world
just slightly off-center.
I taste you in the afternoon air,
in the pause before a sentence,
in the flicker of déjà vu
pressed against the back of my throat.

“Look inside yourself,” they say,
unaware that my insides
spill across worlds,
that my depth isn’t in my chest
but in the trembling corridor of sleep,
where gravity loosens like a sigh
and the laws of here
finally let go.

Night after night,
I step through that soft fracture in reality,
arriving in a place
that feels like the underside of a heartbeat,
familiar, dimly lit,
woven with colors I can’t name.
And there you are,
not quite shaped,
not quite seen,
but felt with the certainty of a hand
pressed gently to mine.

I never remember the details,
just the warmth,
just the alignment,
just the impossible rightness
that greets me like a homecoming
to a home I’ve never walked through awake.

And when morning drags me back,
you unravel into light,
but the flavor of you lingers,
soft, electric,
like the aftertaste of a dream
that meant more than it said.

I won’t call it waiting.
But some part of me
moves through this world
with an open palm,
as if expecting the air to shift,
as if believing
that one day
the universes might fold like paper
and place you gently
into the shape
you’ve been carving in me
all this time.