The Almost-Touch

A Ghazal

Leycesteria formosa, wind-shaken, root-exposed, known in Chinese as “Ghost Flute”—for the eerie song its hollow stem makes when broken. A body moved more than moving. A boundary that sings. (Picture via Wikipedia CC)

A hand reached, but not as a separate thing—
we shimmered before the hush—the almost-touch.

You turned before I spoke—breath paused.
Light, unbidden, pooled—the almost-touch.

Your shoulder brushed mine—
in the fog we called a bridge—the almost-touch.

You said: I dreamed this very pause.
As if delay had kissed—the almost-touch.

Not every nearness earns its name.
Some vanish mid-breath—the almost-touch.

I once touched someone else and thought of you.
That counts, doesn’t it?—the almost-touch.

The future came full of gestures we never made.
Our absence moved like breath—the almost-touch.

In the soil, roots veer, still shaped by stone—
no contact. Still, the hush is the almost-touch.

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Lineage Note
This ghazal continues a lineage begun in The Field Not Yet the Field and deepened in The Flinch Being the Flinch—an ongoing meditation on the somatic thresholds of relation. Where the field trembled, and the flinch spoke, this poem attends to what lingers in proximity: presence unmade but not unmeant.