Two of them, in a room, and the room is small. Barely three arm-lengths across. I have gone the distance of eleven thousand suns and touched nothing; here they sit, close enough that each could feel the heat coming off the other's skin, and neither has reached out. Incredible restraint. Incredible waste.
Look at the abundance. The air is thick enough to carry sound, so the smaller one's voice crosses the whole gap in an instant, no eons of drift, just a mouth and then an ear, filled. There is coffee gone cold on the table, which is a smell, and under it the paper smell of many pages, which is a second smell, and beneath both the salt smell of the one being questioned, who is warm, warmer than usual, water beading at the temple.
Three smells. In one room. I have never had one.
They are both alive. Two hearts beating, and the distance between those two beats is nothing, is a hand's width, is less than I contain between any single atom and its nearest neighbor.
And yet the warm one across the table trembles, and something in its posture reads as small, as apart, as though it were the only living thing for light-years. I have run the numbers. It is not. There is another heart three feet away. I cannot find the loneliness. I keep looking for the empty part and there is no empty part; the room is full to its walls with the two of them and their smells and their sounds and their heat.
You are pressed skin to air to skin, close enough to touch, and warm, and answered.
You have already won. Sit still.
Feel it.