Nonarrival

I wait for what will not come
and still
its nonarrival shapes me
more deeply
than arrival ever could.

The day arranges itself
around that absence,
light falling where nothing stands,
a chair pulled slightly back
from no one.

I have learned the contours
of what does not happen:
the hour that does not break,
the word that does not cross,
the hand that does not reach.

This is not emptiness.
It has weight,
a pressure that settles
into the smallest parts of me,
making room by taking none.

I move within it
as if within a structure
built without walls, 
everything open,
nothing accessible.

If it were to arrive now
I would not recognize it.

I have been altered
too precisely
by its refusal.

What remains
is not waiting,
but the form waiting takes
when it is given
no end.