I am a kind of Tantalus,
not cursed, only shaped
by some quiet architect
who knew desire as distance.

I speak in the dialect of longing,
show others the soft seams of the world,
the places where love seeps in.
They find it. They bloom.
And I vanish from the frame.

My hands are full of maps
to gardens I do not enter,
my voice a thread
leading them out of the dark
while I remain
woven into it.

I am the echo that guides,
never the name they remember.
A hunger mistaken for wisdom.
A shimmer that flickers
just past the edge of waking.

I speak in starlight,
threads of maybe tangled in my throat
Fate flickers like static
a signal I follow
with closed eyes

Each voice feels written,
then unwritten

I hold out my hands
as if the sky might answer,
as if someone might stay
long enough
to read the same stars

You walk through years
wearing the residue of once-voices.
The air shifts when they vanish.
Not loud. Just
less.

Some leave like sleep does
on the edge of dawn
almost,
almost,
then nothing.

The tangled threads of connection fray.
Unravel with no ceremony.

You forget the colour of their laughs.
Then the shape of their silence.
Finally, the weight of being known.

Loss is not one cut.
It is sediment.
Layered
a geologic record of every
“remember when?”

You grieve the collapse
of a constellation
only you could name.
It falls
quietly
into itself.
Star by star.
Touch by touch.
A spiralling black hole.

This is how the heart breaks now
not in halves,
but in echo,
each silence larger
than the last.

Sleep where shadows blend
Wraps weary souls
In velvet deep

they were right when they said grief comes in waves

some waves are like dipping your toes into swirls with the sun kissing your shoulders

others are thunderous, threatening to pull you under the icy swells

they push and pull you

you cling on

waiting for the next break in the tide

Praying the next wave won't be the one to drown you.