The Closest Sketch I’ve Ever Seen

He didn’t understand me.

Not really.

But he sensed me.

In a way no one else ever had.

No map. Just instinct. Just ache.

Just the strange trust that maybe, in the dark, he could reach the edges of me by feel alone.

And somehow, he got close.

Closer than I thought anyone could.

It wasn’t intelligence.

It wasn’t experience.

It was something more raw. More reckless.

The kind of perception you earn when your life depends on reading people.

When you’ve had to seduce to survive.

When you’ve burned through love like it was oxygen and you were always drowning.

He was messy.

And I’m not someone you approach messy.

I’m someone you study like a system.

Someone you debug, observe, adapt to in layers.

Precision is the price of entry.

But he didn’t enter.

He just appeared.

Crashed through the firewall and whispered:

“Help me figure you out.”

And I snapped:

“No. That’s your job.”

That was the code.

He didn’t know it, but I did.

Because if he had asked less, looked less scared, tried less hard—

He might have actually done it.

But we never finished the sketch.

Just outlines.

Just heat and static and the unbearable near-miss of it all.

I don’t romanticize what we had.

It was not safe.

It was not whole.

But it was real.

And rare.

And he was—

the closest sketch I’ve ever seen

of someone who could’ve walked beside me

without flinching.

Not behind.

Not in front.

Beside.

We were too early.

Or too broken.

Or too haunted.

But for a moment—

we matched.

And some days,

I still walk with the echo of that alignment.

Not because I want it back.

But because it reminded me:

There are people in this world

who might not hold you,

but they still see you.

Even if only in outline.