The Soldier’s Hymn
The Soldier’s Hymn
He is a soldier,
a man sculpted by ruin and ritual,
his body written with the language of wars
I can barely hold
without trembling into pieces.
He does not arrive with apology,
but with reverence,
bearing a ukulele like a fragile offering,
his voice clear like the hush of rain on dry earth,
singing hymns meant for no cathedral
but the altar of my skin.
He calls me his sinful pleasure.
But what sin,
when each touch feels like absolution,
when presence kneels without demand,
drawn not to conquer,
but to be undone
by the slow burn of a woman
who holds the flame without flinching?
He belongs elsewhere.
And still,
in the space where belonging dissolves,
he finds a strange kind of freedom.
There are no chains here,
no names carved into calendars.
He does not ask for my mornings,
he lets my hours drift unmeasured.
He does not need me.
And in that vastness,
my hunger grows.
It is never the clinging man
who awakens my longing.
It is the one who arrives whole,
who enters with silence in his bones
and leaves with the scent of my garden
pressed into his breath.
In his eyes,
I do not glimpse a future.
I see constellations.
In his body,
I do not find refuge.
I find flame.
Still,
as his song lingers on my skin,
as his trembling voice stirs
the quiet animal sleeping inside me,
I feel the ache for more.
Not permanence.
Not promises.
Just more.
More of the man
who was never mine,
and yet sings to me
as if I were
the only home
his soul ever recognized.