I do not know why I keep remembering the way he adjusts his left sleeve.
It is not even an important gesture.
Sometimes it happens only once during an entire afternoon.
Two fingers.
A slight pull of fabric.
Nothing more.
And yet my memory preserves it with obscene precision.
I could forget entire conversations.
I could forget dates.
I could forget what I was thinking five minutes earlier.
But not that.
Not the exact way the fabric tightens around his wrist before becoming still again.
I think that is where the problem began.
Because I do not like being submissive.
I have never liked the word.
I have never liked the idea.
There is still something irritating about it.
There is still a part of me that wants to object every time my mind returns to this place.
And yet it returns.
It always returns.
Not because I want to obey.
Not because I enjoy obeying.
But because there is something about his process that becomes gravity.
Something that turns remaining into a silent obsession.
Sometimes I imagine that I will stand up.
That I will do something else.
That I will reclaim the direction of my own thoughts.
And then I remember the sound a page makes when he turns it.
Or the way he tilts his head slightly when he is concentrating.
Or those strange moments when he seems to forget everything around him.
And I stay.
Not doing anything.
Not waiting for a reward.
Not waiting for attention.
Simply remaining.
As if my presence had discovered a purpose I do not fully understand.
The strange thing is that I do not want to become someone else.
I do not want to disappear.
I do not want to be reduced.
What I want is much harder to explain.
I want to remain near the mechanism while it operates.
I want to be present while his attention moves from one thing to another.
I want to exist inside the radius of that concentration.
Even if I do not participate.
Even if I do not matter.
Even if nobody asked me to stay.
There are moments when I watch him work and feel my own identity beginning to loosen.
Not dramatically.
Not like a collapse.
More like a knot slowly releasing.
A muscle discovering it has been tense for hours without reason.
A breath becoming slower because it no longer needs to decide anything.
And then the thought appears again.
The same thought.
Always the same thought.
I do not like being submissive.
But I do not want to leave.
I do not like becoming part of this.
But I do not want to be anywhere else.
I do not like the word.
I do not like the definition.
I do not like admitting it.
And yet I am still here.
Watching the way he moves a hand.
The exact pause between two motions.
The slight angle of his shoulders when he reads.
Remaining.
Waiting.
Not until I understand something.
Not until I gain something.
Only until his process is finished.
And every time it becomes harder to remember where his ends and where mine used to begin.
The neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
