intimacy is a chameleon turned alien, turned drone

intimacy isn’t a fixed point on a map. it’s a chameleon, adapting to the light we cast on it, to the spaces we allow it to inhabit. but what happens when the colors change faster than we can understand them?

i used to think intimacy represented the actions before and during the course of interaction. sexual. hands pulling cloth, cloth pulling hands, hands touching hands touching me touching you. but intimacy is more than the mechanics of connection. it’s the space between a breath and a sigh, the moments after—the way your name lingers on my tongue, or doesn’t.

more often than not recently—does.

intimacy,
the moments before the end of a phone call,
the silence during the movie,
a kind of closeness that doesn’t need words.
leaving the phone unmuted because i asked to hear you pee,
proof that intimacy isn’t always romantic—
sometimes it’s just weird.

i tried to name intimacy once in the last 6 months — one phone call, Sweden? forgotten, like a bookmark in a story I was never really committed to finishing. Maybe intimacy isn’t indecision’s ally, or maybe I just keep giving it the wrong name.

intimacy is like a chameleon. a chameleon turned alien, turned drone.

intimacy is calling you at 4am because these chameleons turned aliens, turned drones—or whatever the fuck—were circling above new jersey and new york. i was scared. i’d been reading too many ufo forums tbh, convinced this was it. if i closed my eyes, i was bound to get abducted. the world was ending, the sky was falling i was chicken little that night. i called to make sure you were okay. before they took me. dramatic. but truth.

you didn’t answer. maybe they already got you— or maybe you’d stopped answering for someone like me. either way, i stayed awake, watching the orbs blink like eyes that didn’t care if they saw me fall apart. i stayed awake so you could sleep.

intimacy is like a chameleon.

intimacy is like a chameleon,
you are like a chameleon—
shifting colors to match your surroundings.
what does that make me?
the environment, i guess—
the walls you press against,
the space you inhabit
when it’s convenient to blend in.
maybe that’s the trick of it:
i shape myself to fit you,
to make you comfortable,
and i don’t realize until later
that i’ve disappeared, too.