He wore anger

like an old black coat,
stitched by winters
no one else survived.

The town mistook silence
for cruelty.
His eyes carried storms,
his mouth remembered
how to bite down on grief
instead of names.

Children moved aside.
Men measured him.
Women...
women looked twice.

Not because he smiled—
he almost never did.

But because somewhere beneath
the splintered bark,
they heard water.

There are some souls
that smell like rain
long before the clouds arrive.

He loved as forests love:
without announcement,
without witness,
without asking permission
to resurrect what had already
been buried.

His touch was rarely skin.

It was the way he listened
until forgotten pieces of a woman
stood back up inside her.

The way he remembered
the smallest tremor in her voice
while the rest of the world
remembered only her beauty.

He made lonely hearts
feel discovered.

That was his danger.

The wives lingered longer
at market stalls.

Walks became slower.

Windows opened
for no reason at all
whenever his footsteps
crossed the street.

Some called it curiosity.

The wiser women
never lied to themselves.

They knew desire
is rarely born from beauty.

It is born
when someone sees
the wound you spent years
convincing everyone else
didn't exist.

His affection
was never loud.

It arrived like dusk—
soft enough
that no one noticed
the daylight leaving
until it was already gone.

And those fortunate enough
to receive even the smallest measure
of his impossible tenderness
found the world altered forever.

How could ordinary conversation
satisfy them
after hearing a soul
that spoke fluent devotion?

How could empty embraces
quiet the ache
once they had rested
inside a love
that expected nothing
yet healed everything?

It was not his body
they became haunted by.

It was his essence.

The impossible peace
that lingered long after
he had disappeared around a corner.

Some spent years
pretending they had forgotten him.

Others became poets.

A few became ghosts
inside their own marriages,
chasing in memory
what fate had only allowed them
to borrow.

He never noticed
the wake he left behind.

Or perhaps he did.

Perhaps that was why
he walked alone—

because even he understood
that there are loves
which ask for nothing,

yet awaken
a hunger
the world has no language
to satisfy.