Stayed, But Not the Same

The body remembers before it understands, not as an image but as a slow pressure that settles and does not announce itself, a pressure that moves across the skin and gathers where leaving once seemed possible. Desire is still present, but it has been stripped of direction; it no longer pulls forward, it only confirms duration. What remains is not attachment, but habit shaped by time, a staying that happened before a decision could form. Touch exists, but without urgency, without promise, like warmth that passed through a surface long ago and left no source behind. Wanting persists, but it no longer opens anything; it accumulates, turns inward, becomes weight. The body learns this weight and carries it without protest, not because it agrees, but because resistance arrives too late to matter. Change does not arrive as an event; it spreads quietly, altering posture, breath, expectation, until recognition itself shifts. The body bears witness to this alteration, to desire without outcome, to closeness that does not resolve into presence. There is no departure here, only continuation under altered conditions, a remaining that reshapes the body from the inside. What stayed did not stay intact. It stayed, but not the same.