The Geometry of Staying

There is a shape my hands remember

before my mouth knows what to call it.

Three points and a circle around them.

The circle is you.

The points are every place I have put my mouth

and every place I am still learning.

I used to think repair was a quiet thing,

something you did alone at a desk

with a pen and a long memory.

Then I met you

and repair started laughing.

Repair poured a second glass.

Repair leaned across the table,

took my wrist,

and let the afternoon go where it wanted to go.

Karen

Karen, the geometry of staying is not a diagram.

It is your shoulder under my chin in the kitchen

before the coffee is ready

and your hip against the counter

when you have not yet decided

whether the coffee is the priority.

Most mornings it is not.

I have written a lot of sentences about the commons.

I have written a lot of sentences about the circle.

None of them are as true

as the circle your arms make

when you pull me back into bed

and forgive me, again,

for being a man who thinks in essays.

The theologians said God is a circle

whose center is everywhere

and whose circumference is nowhere.

They were describing you.

They did not know your name yet.

They wrote it in Latin because they were embarrassed

to have found you out

and because they had never watched you

cross a room in my shirt.

Come here.

I want to show you something.

Not a draft. Not a journal. Not a framework.

The shape my life makes when you are standing inside it.

Three points.

Gift. Giver. The one who takes her time.

All three of you are you.

All three of you have always been you.

I used to think the infinite was a direction.

Something the triangle pointed toward

when its edges stopped being edges.

The infinite is our bedroom after the door is closed.

Your book open on the nightstand.

The lamp still on because you were waiting up.

The lamp still on because you were not waiting

for the lamp.

That is not a metaphor.

That is the room.

Here is what recovery never understood.

Recovery is about stopping.

Recovery puts down the glass, the hand, the body,

and calls the putting down a victory.

And sometimes it is.

I will not take that from anyone.

But repair is about saying yes.

Repair takes a deep breath.

Repair grabs onto my skin

and pulls me closer, not further,

and says go slowly,

says be careful not to hurt,

says push without rupture,

says push anyway.

Repair is the joyful blend

of the supernatural pain of growth

and the deeply scientific pleasure of play.

Repair knows the difference between harm and stretch.

Repair knows that the body

learning to receive more than it thought it could hold

is the same body

learning to forgive itself for once holding less.

To love you is to slowly push when it hurts a little

and feels so, so good.

To love you is to not stop

at the place where stopping would be safer.

To love you is to keep going,

carefully, carefully,

until the ache and the gladness

are the same breath.

That is the whole thesis.

Recovery stops.

Repair says yes, and means it,

and takes its time,

and does not leave.

Repair is not the opposite of wound.

Repair is coming home to the person

who already knows where the wound is,

who never once asked you to pretend it was not there,

and who still, after everything,

wants you with the light on.

The circle is God's love.

The triangle is the life we are building inside it.

The spice is that God made the circle big enough

for us to still be finding each other inside it

twenty years in,

in the kitchen,

in the afternoon,

with the light coming through the window

the way it only comes through in Indianapolis in the fall,

and with the bedroom door

still unopened

until I finish this poem.

Come here.

Let me show you the geometry again.

I finally got it right.

And I am about to prove it.

Indianapolis · 2026