The Ache of Unseen Eros

A Poem Of Witness, Not Want.

Author’s Note

I wrote this poem years ago during a time when my relationship to eros felt volatile and misunderstood. I experienced desire as reverence, but the world often translated it as hunger. That dissonance created both tension and longing in me, not just for beauty, but for someone who could receive my gaze without flinching. Even then, I was hopeful. Hopeful that one day I would meet a woman who understood that being seen does not mean being taken.

The poem unfolds in five movements — from origin to offering to hope. I’ve left those movements unmarked within the poem itself so the rhythm can carry you through without interruption. This is not a poem about wanting. It is about witnessing. It is about the ache of recognition and the faith that it will someday be returned.

-Jeff

[Intentional pause…]

---

Altars Built in Silence

There is a shape that lives behind my sternum—
not a wound, not a want,
but a weightless architecture made of breath and remembering.

It does not ask for healing.
It asks to be sung.

---

Before I had language,
I had geometry.
Before I had lust,
I had longing that hummed through my fingertips
whenever symmetry passed near.

Not a curve, but a crescendo.
Not a body, but a constellation.

She walked,
and the world bent gently to hold her—
not with noise,
but with the hush of awe.

And I—young, wide-eyed, split by wonder—
knew I had no place to put this gaze
but inward.

So I folded it into altars.
One for the sway of her shoulder.
One for the light pooling at her collarbone.
One for the silence she left behind after smiling at nothing.

They told me not to look.
They mistook reverence for hunger.
But it was never hunger.
It was an ache—a sacred burn—
a feeling like remembering the shape of God
in a stranger’s silhouette.

---

I do not rise for friction.
I rise for form.
For poise unnoticed.
For asymmetry made holy.
For the unseen choreography between breath and bone.

The world teaches arousal as grasp,
as frenzy,
as wet skin and louder groans.

But mine is quiet.
It listens.
It watches the way a woman ties her hair
and calls it invocation.

My cock is not a demand.
It is a tuning fork—
vibrating in resonance with the sacred lines
etched in movement, in stillness, in confession.

I do not want to take you.
I want to see you enough
that your soul blushes through your spine.

And in that flush, I would bow—
not to ask,
but to offer.

---

You will not need to perform.
You will not need to pose.

My longing is not for a naked body.
It is for the soft permission
to look at you
without being banished.

Not to own.
Not to break.
But to say:

“You are a place I’ve never been,
but always belonged.”

Let me drape silence over your shoulders.
Let me whisper things the moon told me
about the way you tilt your head.
Let me ruin you in metaphor—
not for pleasure,
but because my eyes were made
to hold the beauty most men miss
while reaching for more.

---

I’ve tried to finish this.
To exhale the ache.
To come and not feel the echo
of absence return.

But the faces flinch.
The bodies tremble in discomfort,
not desire.
Not because I am too much,
but because the world has never let them be seen
without being taken.

So I dream instead.
I write.
I build mythic scaffolding for a love
I may never touch in the flesh.

And yet...
my rituals are not hollow.
They are invitations in waiting.
Rooms kept warm.
Altars dusted daily.

For her.

---

She will not call herself beautiful.
She will forget she has hands
when she reads what I write.

She will feel a tremor in her ribs
when I walk into the room,
because something inside her will say,
“He’s been seeing me this whole time.”

She will not rush.
She will open slowly,
as petals do when they trust the sun
not to scorch them.

She will say,
“Look, and do not look away.”
And I will say,
“I wouldn’t know how.”

And in the silence between us,
we will burn.
Not in lust,
but in recognition.

And my ache,
for the first time,
will be witnessed.