By Charles M. Sumid     Copyright 2025     Written 2016

After class.

The dojo empty except for shadows.

He teaches the new student to stand.

“Too close.”

The boy steps back.

“Too far.”

Forward again.

“Feel it. The distance where you’re safe but ready.
Where their reach ends and yours begins.”

The boy tries. Keeps thinking in feet, inches.

Wrong language.

“Close your eyes.”

Now.

The body knows what the mind overthinks.

That electric edge where space becomes intention.

Ma-ai.

Not measured. Felt.

Years to learn this—
how distance breathes, expands with fear, contracts with rage.

How two calm fighters need more space than angry ones.

The boy opens his eyes.

He’s found it without knowing.

That perfect gap where potential lives.

“Now move with me.”

They circle. The distance holds, elastic, alive.

When he advances, the boy yields.
When he retreats, the boy follows.

Always that same invisible tether.

Later, walking downtown, he sees it everywhere.

Couples who lost their ma-ai, standing too close or too far.

The drunk man everyone avoids, his distance collapsed to nothing.

The businesswoman maintaining perfect intervals in the crowded subway.

All combat. All dance.

The boy texts: “I felt it. The space that speaks.”

He smiles.

His teacher’s words return—
“Ma-ai isn’t empty.”

In bed, he measures the distance to his sleeping wife.

Close enough for warmth. Far enough for dreams.