After Solitude, the Body — This solitude is deep— ancient, intimate, almost primordial— and has gathered me into itself, as though the entire world were a single, unbreachable embrace. And yet, what is the flight of a bird beside this? How much purer, how immeasurably more innocent the body when it becomes only air, only departure. Still, there are moments when the touch of a hand, the nearness of another body, awakens every atom in me— one by one, as though my flesh were a sleeping constellation suddenly remembering its stars. And then the kiss upon my mouth— that kiss which, without blinking, discovers everything my waiting has concealed: the secret architecture of desire, all the small, trembling expectations I had buried beneath the ordinary hours. All of it— all of it is mine. Your tongue moving across my body writes a fire there, an alphabet of intimacy that no solitude has ever been able to decipher. Your fingers— your whole being entering the grammar of mine; your saliva becoming indistinguishable from my own; your lips finding my lips; your body dissolving against my mouth. And as I surrender myself to that hunger, I find myself wondering— is this what a life is? To spend an eternity learning the difference between being alone and being, for one incandescent moment, completely inhabited?