Your Presence Is Present Enough Novels & Stories

It has been available for a long time. He sat on the edge of the desk, which was not his usual posture, and picked up his coffee and held it. 'What have you been thinking about?' he said. 'About being a mother.' She considered the question honestly, giving it the same weight he had given the question she had asked him. 'I have been thinking about my own mother,' she said. 'About the specific quality of her presence when I was growing up. She was never hovering, never in the way, but she was always there. You never had to look for her. You always knew exactly where she was and that she was paying attention even when she appeared not to be.' She paused. 'I want to be that kind of present. Not

I slow and I let it sit and I keep running and I breathe with it the way you breathe with something you are not sure you trust yet, carefully, as if too much attention might collapse it back into the quiet it came from. She is not howling. Not pressing forward with the urgency of something that has been suppressed and is finally releasing. Nothing dramatic. She is simply .... present. The way a person is present in a room when they have been absent for a long time and have come back quietly, without announcement, and are just .... there. Warm. Aware. Oriented. Three years.

She had noticed this and filed it without examining it for a while and then in August, lying on the sofa on a Tuesday evening, she had examined it. The difference was presence. Not the presence she had been learning for five years, the staying-in-the- room, the both-feet, the curtain open. The other kind of presence, the presence that was the precondition of the five-year kind, the presence of the other person. The evenings of the pregnancy were evenings in which both of them were more present than they had been in the evenings before it. She had thought about why. She had arrived at this: they were both at capacity.

But for now, right here, right this moment, it’s enough. We exist. And that is everything.

She had been generous and funny and entirely right about everything she had said when she ended it, which had been both the clearest sign of her quality and the most difficult thing about the experience. You're never fully here, she had said. They had been in the kitchen of the flat they had shared for two years, and she had been standing at the counter and her voice had been very even, the voice of someone who had been rehearsing this for a while and had decided that evenness was kinder than emotion. Even when you're in the room even when you're looking at me, talking to me half of you is somewhere else. With a case, or something you think you should have done differently, or someone you'

He snapped. “No, I just think that even earlier too, you were mad with me because I was always following around, and now when I am not, you are calling me names. Next what I will be, currently I am an attention whore, then I might be something bigger, like what, the “S” word. Should I spell it for you?” I wheeze. “Don’t put words in my mouth. You know what I am trying to say.” “I am not putting words in your mouth. I am just repeating what you have just said to me.”

James POV: I have never been in such a good mood. Watching his face all night makes me feel secure like I am not alone. Well until he suddenly opened the door when I am peeing. The next morning, seeing him sleeping soundly make me feels like if I could stop the world turning I would make it surely happen because, I just want to stop the time for him to sleep a little bit longer. I can't understand myself too why I want to treat someone gently like now.

Not the absence of everything that came before. Just this. Just us. Still here. THE END

I was at a dinner table with two people I had not known three months ago and felt, simply and without complication, like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Not romantically. Not with any weight. Just: here. Present. Myself. The original version. Still becoming.

It wasn't loud or excessive, just enough to feel… certain. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I paused. Not to judge. Not to doubt. Just to take in the moment. This wasn't about perfection. It was about presence. About reminding him that beyond everything—the danger, the tension, the weight he carried—there was still something waiting for him here. Something steady. Something his. I adjusted my hair slightly, then let my hands fall to my sides, exhaling softly. Downstairs, everything was ready. And now… So was I.