Theory of Repetition

I keep thinking I am the pattern

instead of the person inside it

a hand learning the shape of loss

before it happens

a mouth rehearsing apology

like it is a language I was born speaking

I say I am trying to go slow

but I am trying not to disappear first

You say you need safety

before coming closer

I hear

not yet

and my body translates it into history

the way rooms used to close

without warning

the way love became something

I had to earn by being smaller

I am afraid I will ruin this

like I have ruined things by holding them too tightly

or letting them slip away before I could trust them

I am afraid my wanting

becomes weather

that drives people away

Still, I keep coming back

to the same question

if I am not chosen quickly

if I am not held in the exact language I understand

do I become someone unrecognizable again

or was I already

And somewhere beneath all of it

was a quieter truth

I kept trying not to hear

that love should not leave me

decoding silence

like a survival skill

that maybe my fear

was not the whole story

maybe some part of me

already knew

the difference between patience

and starvation

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room—Love Forever, 1966/1994, installation view.

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