In the absence of? Everything.

He holds me so tight I might compress back into stardust.

Her loving fingers card through my hair so softly, with the tenderness I missed for decades of my life.

Low tones of “I love you” received with trust and warmth, having been, at long last, understood.

Seen.

To be known is to be safe—

In these touches,

In casual intimacies no longer tinged with metal, no longer prompting FLIGHT!

The worlds I couldn’t know before I knew myself to be this way.

A-: not as in missing, without, but as in free.

So many spaces of perceived absence beget

So much room for becoming

A person who can finally love themself back.