I tried
I tried to look away.
She didn’t stop me.
That made the ache worse.
The mirror betrayed me first.
In its tall, unforgiving frame
I saw her — still, sovereign —
and myself mid-turn,
already unravelling.
She didn’t move.
That was the violence.
She held the room the way a queen holds court —
without raising her voice,
without lifting a hand.
And I felt it —
that tightening low in my chest,
that heat that isn’t hunger
but recognition.
She knew.
Not guessed.
Knew.
She watched me watch myself want her.
Watched the denial crack.
Watched my breath shorten
like something tightening a cord.
I should have stepped back.
Instead, something inside me fractured —
a clean, silent break.
Not forced.
Not taken.
Chosen.
My spine lost its argument.
My pride loosened its grip.
The carpet met my knees
harder than I expected.
There was no drama in it.
No plea.
Just the unmistakable shift of power
landing where it had always intended to be.
She didn’t touch me.
She didn’t need to.
Her gaze lowered —
not cruel,
nor kind —
just certain.
And that certainty
undid me completely.
In the mirror
I saw the truth of it:
She owned the silence.
She owned the air.
She owned the moment
And I —
I crumbled willingly,
pulse exposed,
control surrendered not in defeat
but in devotion.
When our eyes locked again,
there was no ache left.
Only rupture.
And the quiet, irreversible knowledge
that I was hers
because I chose to be
ㅤ
For those who choose to go a little deeper
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Everything I publish publicly stays public.
This is about making space for slower work, and for people who want to stay close to how it’s made.
If you’ve been hovering, this is a good moment to step in.
I’m always open to thoughtful writing collaborations.
Other prose and poems from me.
Nothing truly leaves — it just changes how it stays.
If something moved in you — a silence that whispered — I’d love to hear it below, or in my DM’s.
All artwork courtesy of NDjin Gallery
Mark, reading this felt like watching a very quiet moment of truth unfold. The kind where no one raises their voice, yet something inside a person shifts forever. What stayed with me wasn’t the power itself, but the recognition you describe. That strange instant when we see ourselves clearly, without our usual defenses, and realise the heart has already chosen before the mind can argue. There’s something almost ceremonial in the way you describe that surrender, not as defeat but as a conscious giving of oneself to a moment that feels undeniable. It carries that mysterious side of being human: how sometimes the deepest turning points happen in silence, in a gaze, in the honest acknowledgement of what the soul has already recognised.
This took me by surprise. Here the mirror becomes the true accomplice. Not her. Not even desire. The mirror forces the narrator to witness the moment where resistance dissolves into recognition. That’s what makes the scene so compelling: nothing is taken. Everything is seen.
What struck me most is the line “My spine lost its argument.”
That’s such an intimate way to describe surrender; not humiliation, but the body finally conceding to a truth the mind was trying to outrun.
And her stillness… that’s the real gravity of the poem. She doesn’t conquer. She exists with certainty, and that certainty reorganizes the room.
To me, the poem isn’t really about domination at all.
It’s about the terrifying clarity of realizing that the moment you feared losing control… was actually the moment you recognized where you wanted to belong.
Quiet. Controlled. Unsettling in the best way. ✨