Then Darius takes the stone. Looks at me across the flames.
"This one's for Stone," he says. "Who found something I've been looking for."
His poem's about envy. Not bitter, just truthful. About watching his officemate stumble into love and wondering when his turn comes. About wanting what Stone has, that certainty and fierceness and mutual choosing.
When he finishes, he tosses me the stone.
I catch it. Feel the weight, the warmth from his hands.
I've been composing this all week. In my head while helping Lacy shelve books, while lying awake beside her counting her breaths, while watching human strangers judge us through smartphone cameras.
"I found home in unexpected hands," I start. The words come rough, unpracticed. I'm not good at this. Never have been. But the circle holds space for clumsy honesty.
"Small hands. Clever hands. Hands that count coins
and turn pages and measure out love
in careful doses until I came along
too big, too much, too hungry for belonging.
She fed me anyway."
I pause. The fire shifts, sending sparks up into darkness.
"Now they want to call it spectacle.
Want to name our loving a disruption,
our touching a cultural violation,
our futures incompatible as oil and water.
But I've tasted her. I've learned her rhythms.
I know the soft sounds she makes
when I'm gentle and the fierce ones
when I'm not.
I know how she fights. How she chooses.
How she looked at me and said
yes, you, this, us, even when it costs.
So let them rule. Let them judge.
Let them try to legislate the space
between her heartbeat and mine.
I know what I'm keeping."
The stone feels heavier when I finish. Or maybe I feel lighter.
The circle sits in silence. Then Mara reaches across and squeezes my shoulder.
