It has always been easier
to be the hands.
To be the one who reaches,
who anticipates,
who memorizes the shape of other’s silence
and fills it before they have to ask.
I know how to study hunger.
I know how to recognize pain.
I know how to plate comfort
and to serve it quitely.
I know how to make myself useful,
how to fold my love into small, practical corners
so it doesn’t inconvenience anyone.
But when you turn towards me,
when your hands are the ones reaching,
something in me forgets its language.
I go still.
I go awkward.
I start searching for instructions
that were never written.
It’s not that I don’t feel it.
It’s not that I don’t want it.
It’s that receiving feels like standing
in a room with no furniture,
no armor,
no exit sign glowing red behind me.
When you do something for me
my chest tightens like I’ve been called on
without studying for the test of being loved.
I don’t know where to put my eyes.
I don’t know what face to make.
I don’t know how to hold joy
without immediately trying to repay it.
Because, let’s face it.
Giving is control.
Giving is safe.
Giving lets me measure my worth in effort.
Receiving is exposure.
Receiving is trust without a ledger.
Receiving is letting you see
how desperately I want it.
So if I hesitate,
if my reaction comes out smaller than you
hoped,
if I fumble the moment in my nervous hands,
please know
there is a part of me
fighting tears behind my ribs.
Please know
I am not unimpressed.
I am overwhelmed.
You are touching part of me
that learned love as labor,
not as gift.
And I am trying.
I am trying to believed
that I do no have to earn
what you are placing gently
into my open, trembling palms.
spring of 2026.
MISTER WILLIAM REILLY 