Moving-touch
A Ghazal
You arrive like rain; each drop a moving-touch— none asked permission, all of it moving-touch. Some touches came as warmth, then vanished mid-touch; others stayed only long enough to scratch as moving-touch. I named it—too late, too soon, too much and not enough; even language slid past me as moving-touch. A stone bruises quiet beneath the river’s hush— the current carries memory—still a moving-touch. I called it care. I called it harm. Nothing held— what stayed faithful was only moving-touch. Unasked, a sorrow brushed my shoulder, kept moving consent lagged behind the speed of moving-touch. Rooms couldn’t keep what was exiled— walls learned to leak by practicing moving-touch. Even goodbye didn’t stay to finish its migration— leaving, too, became a form of moving-touch. Now I don’t ask what a touch means or wants— I watch how it moves, how it touches moving-touch.
Lineage Note
Moving-Touch extends a lineage of ghazals exploring touch beyond reception, return, and entanglement. Here, touch appears as motion rather than event—plural, unsettled, and migratory—moving through bodies, rooms, weather, and language without arriving or resolving.
Oh gosh! This is exquisite, I could taste it and feel it in my skin 🪷
This is great. There’s such a rhythmic, cyclic thing to this form (er, which i may have vaguely heard once in the foggy past, but had no idea what it actually consisted of until recently). Full of lines that are really enjoyable to say.