People assume a long absence
must mean no one ever knocked.
That perhaps desire passed me over,
that the mirror betrayed me,
that opportunity became a drought
and I simply learned to call thirst
a spiritual choice.
No.
I have never struggled
to find someone willing
to share a bed.
I struggled to understand
why a bed should be enough.
Because after you have lived long enough
with love moving through your life
in stranger forms—
through intuition,
through presence,
through that inexplicable gravity
between two people who have barely spoken—
the body stops being the most interesting
place to touch someone.
I learned that attraction is common.
**Recognition is rare.**
So I became difficult to seduce.
Not because I cannot feel temptation.
Because I can.
And I have learned
that wanting someone
does not automatically mean
they deserve entrance.
There are doors in me
that beauty cannot open.
Flirting cannot pick the lock.
Loneliness does not get a key.
And chemistry, however electric,
does not automatically earn
the right to become intimacy.
I resist seduction deliberately.
I want to know what remains
when the performance gets tired.
When the clever words run out.
When there is no audience.
When neither of us is trying
to become irresistible.
**Who are you then?**
That is the person
I might fall for.
Getting close to me is not easy.
My face has probably warned away
more people than my mouth ever could.
I wear distance naturally.
A resting expression
that sometimes looks like
a locked gate with poor customer service.
And perhaps that is useful.
Because the ones searching
for something effortless
usually keep walking.
But occasionally,
someone stays.
Someone becomes curious
instead of intimidated.
Someone notices
there is warmth behind the walls
and doesn't arrive carrying
a hammer to prove they can break them.
They simply learn the entrance.
Slowly.
Honestly.
Without demanding access
to rooms they have not yet earned.
And that is where
everything changes.
Because those few who make it through
discover something
I rarely know how to explain:
I do not love casually.
I don't really know how.
Once I recognize someone,
once trust has taken root,
once I can finally put down
the instinct to guard the gates—
there is an entire world behind me.
Loyalty.
Devotion.
Playfulness.
Protection.
Depth.
A tenderness I keep hidden
because the world has taught me
that precious things should not
be left unattended.
So no,
celibacy was never proof
that nobody wanted me.
It became proof
that being wanted
stopped impressing me.
Bodies can desire bodies
without ever meeting the person inside them.
I have had enough life
to understand the difference.
I am waiting for the human
who makes restraint unnecessary—
not because they finally
overpower my resistance,
but because somewhere
between their mind and mine,
I forget why I needed it.
Someone who understands
that beneath the difficult expression,
the guarded doors,
the stubborn independence,
and the refusal to be easily seduced,
there was never a man
running away from intimacy.
There was simply someone
waiting for intimacy
to mean something.
Because beneath everything
I have learned,
everything I question,
everything I protect,
there is one language
I have never needed translated.
**Love.**
And if someone ever reaches
that far into me,
they will understand
why I was willing to wait.