longer.blue

~ Not indifference But rather for a deference For someone not you ~ There is a particular kind of ache that comes not from being unloved, but from watching love move elsewhere. This haiku locates itself precisely in that tender gap — the space between being cared for and watching care be given away. The poem opens with a correction. 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦. Before it says anything about what it is, it insists on what it is not. This is a meaningful choice, because the feeling the poem describes — the feeling of not being chosen in a given moment — mimics indifference so convincingly that the heart can barely tell the difference. The clarification is almost desperate, as if the speaker knows the listener has already drawn the wrong conclusion and must be stopped before the misunderstanding takes root. The first line is not a beginning; it is a defense. Then comes the turn. 𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦. The word is careful, even beautiful. Deference is not rejection. It is the conscious, deliberate act of yielding — of saying 𝘺𝘰𝘶, 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘦. It implies respect, tenderness, an elevated regard for the one being deferred to. In philosophy and ethics, deference is considered a virtue. In love, it is perhaps the highest expression of generosity: the willingness to recede so that another may be seen. And yet, for the person standing at the edge of that moment, watching the deferral happen toward someone else, the virtue can feel indistinguishable from erasure. This is the poem's quiet devastation. Deference, by its very nature, requires a witness — someone who is 𝘯𝘰𝘵 the recipient. To defer to one is, implicitly, to not defer to another. The act cannot exist without creating, somewhere in its orbit, a person whose turn it is not. The haiku names that person. It does not console them. It only clarifies, with the precision of a small, cold fact: 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶. The final line lands without cruelty, and that is exactly what makes it so difficult to absorb. There is no malice in 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶. There is no hierarchy implied, no permanent rejection declared. And yet the phrasing carries a kind of exclusion that is total in the moment it occurs. 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶. Not now.  But in the feeling-body, in the part of a person that cannot parse this, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 arrives as a verdict. What the poem ultimately holds is the complexity of loving expansively. To love everything — to believe that all deserve tenderness, that deference should move around like light, touching each thing in turn — is a profound and generous philosophy. But it does not dissolve the experience of the interval. Between one's turns, in the quiet, a person must reckon with the fact that love is sometimes elsewhere. That its being elsewhere is n͟o͟t abandonment. Sadly, knowing this, truly knowing it, does not always stop the ache from arriving anyway. ~ This observation was made with the assistance of claude.ai. ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To express your gratitude, visit: https://tinyurl.com/andy-rukes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~