Untethered

A Poem by Max Rwizi, Jr.

He is not broken though he knows the world suspects it.
He recognizes the look people give him when he leaves the party early sliding away to a house where the only thing waiting is the low hum of the refrigerator.
They see a tragedy in his quiet exit
A puzzle piece that refuses to find its match.
They imagine he is waiting for a bolt of lightning to strike his heart and change his mind but he is not waiting for anything at all.
He is not a drinker.
He has no desire for the liquid courage that leads to a phone call he might regret.
He does not want the warmth of whiskey to forge a connection he does not truly feel.
He prefers the edges of his world to remain sharp.
He likes to know exactly where he ends and where the air begins.
When a room begins to tilt toward the messy,
he simply steps out into the cold, sober night feeling as though he has escaped a cage.

People call him charming.
They say he has a way with words and he knows they are right.
He writes poems in the middle of the night when the rest of the world has given up.
He writes about the way streetlights look like fallen stars on wet pavement and the quiet dignity of a lone tree.
He can describe love with such precision that people believe he is overflowing with it but for him words are just colors.
He likes to arrange them on a page and then close the book.
He does not want the poem to walk off the paper and ask him what he is thinking.
He is not looking for a relationship.
He is not "between" loves nor is he waiting for the right one to arrive.
He has no wish to be a project or the missing piece in someone else’s puzzle.
The idea of a partner feels like a tether
A soft, polite rope around his neck that would slowly pull him back from the private places he needs to go in his head.
He does not want to share his bed, his Sundays or the rhythm of his breathing.
He refuses to translate his silence into something that makes another person feel safe.

He loves the night.
Not the evening, not the twilight but the deep, hollow hours between three and five in the morning.
The world is finally honest then.
The masks are on nightstands and ambition is asleep.
In the dark, he is not a son a friend or a prospect. He is just a witness.
He sits on his windows and watches the moon,
That cold, indifferent rock and feels a kinship with it.
It does not need to be touched to be bright.
If someone entered his life they would eventually want a corner of his dresser.
They would want to know why he is quiet.
They would want to be the reason for his smile.
But he wants to be the only reason he smiles.
He wants to wake up without having to negotiate the space inside his own mind.
He wants to be able to stare at a wall for hours without explaining the weight of the silence.
The responsibility of another person’s happiness is a heavy coat he refuses to wear.
It is not that he hates people. He simply loves the version of himself that only exists when no one is looking.
He is a better poet when he is a ghost. He is a better man when he is a shadow.
He has no interest in being a "half" searching for another "half" to be whole.
He hears them talking about "growing old together."
They fear the quiet house at eighty but he fears the crowded house at thirty.
He fears the slow erosion of his own will the way two people become one blurred shape until neither can remember where they started.