I had seen him before— 

a shadow 

folded into the stone flank of the city,

bones wrapped in a sweater’s husk, 

as a torrent of hurried shoes swept past 

untouched. 

Then you entered. 

A pause in the relentless sentence, 

a leaf slipping loose from the season, 

carrying light in a paper cup, 

and when you bent toward him 

a word fell, soft as ash on water. 

The man looked up— 

and for an instant, his eyes flared open, 

above the hunger, above need, 

with the memory of being seen, 

a spark rising from cinders 

like the city he once was. 

And everything else dissolved: 

coughing engines, the metronome of heels, 

the siren cry of the forgetful. 

Only you— your gaze, 

a quiet fire rewriting ruin into radiance, 

alchemy moving through the air 

as though the broken were never broken, 

as though the lost had already come home. 

And that moment plays forever, 

a movie where you’re the lead, 

and I, your only audience,

love you most in the silence after. 

You learn it then, in the quiet place, 

that the distance holds you less 

than you have longed for its closing.

And if I love you fiercely,

like lightning cleaves the sky,

it’s because I still see you there,

on that street corner,

offering a paper cup and a word,

lifting a broken man

back into the light.