Boundary

Some silences are built like arrows, the way some boys are raised to be blunt arsenals, accidental daggers. Their mothers never willed, and so the color of love is likely that of absence or restraint. The knife leaves its hilt only to puncture distance.

Tell me where you end. I press my thumb to the window and the glass admits nothing, only my breath blooming back like a name I haven't earned. My mother taught me the fence was a kindness — the dog, the garden, the part of love that says *no further*. But I've spent my whole life leaning, learning how a body becomes a door only by refusing to be one.