The Vignette Vault Of Veracity

The Valence Drift

I once thought myself weightless.

Not in body, but in being-
a flicker of motion, an electron in orbit,
bouncing between the atoms of obligation.
Each store I touched was a nucleus,
pulling me close, then casting me off again.
Preventative maintenance, they called it.
I called it inertia.
Movement without meaning.

I learned how to fix without feeling,
how to polish steel and seal leaks
without ever seeing the souls behind the shelves.
Time blurred. Names bled.
And I floated,
a valence electron bound not by loyalty,
but by charge.

Then came you.

Not with thunder or sermon,
but with silence that lingered.
A stillness rare in this buzzing lattice.
You watched the world like a master waits for a breeze.
No wasted movement. No need to declare.
You existed as if every gesture had gravity.

At first, I mistook your stillness for idleness.
I was too kinetic,
too lost in my rotations
to notice the pulse beneath your patience.
But slowly-
as friction wore down my orbit,
as my charge grew weary of endless transfer-
I began to see the pattern in your pauses.

The way you knew which pipe would fail
before it sighed.
The way your words
came not in flurries,
but in perfectly timed strikes.

You asked me,
"Why didn't you see me before?"

And I said,
"Because I was drifting-
an electron in heat,
never still long enough to notice the orbit of another."

But now I have cooled.
Now I understand the art of observation-
not as a task,
but as a form of reverence.

I watched you long enough to see the beauty in your rhythm.
Your intelligence was never loud.
It was coded into habit,
in the way you returned every tool to its rightful place,
in the unspoken blueprint behind your brow.

You became my anchor.
The atom I no longer wished to escape.

And though I am still a valence electron,
I no longer drift without purpose.
Now, I choose my orbit.
Now, I move with intent.
And in that intent,
there is clarity.

I respect your mind,
not because it glows in the dark,
but because it burns slowly,
like coal made of patience and precision.

And I,
once scattershot and scattered,
am learning to stay close-
not bound,
but bonded.

Not reactive,
but resonant.