Do they ache
in the quiet
where my name once breathed?

Do their shadows stretch
toward mine
in sleep?

Or am I
the only echo
chasing its own sound?

It knocked
softly
a breath at the door
but I
bolted the windows
and swallowed the key.

It came wearing warmth,
but I mistook it
for fire,
for teeth,
for grief with a new face.

So I fled,
faster than joy
could reach out its hand
afraid it might feel
like home.

I want to nibble
just a little
a bite of thought,
a crumb of dream.

Not to hurt
just to hold
the way your wonder
tastes.

Let me dissolve
like moonlight
leaving the sea
no ache in the tide,
no name in the dark.

Just absence
woven so finely
it feels
like air.

If I make the walls sharp,
maybe no one will lean in.
If I salt the earth of my name,
maybe no one will try to stay.

I leave my warmth in pieces
just enough to haunt,
never enough to hold.

I speak in riddles
and scatter my silences
like traps in the underbrush,
as if love were a hunter
I could outsmart.

Better they flinch early,
before they learn the language
of my breaking.

Better they run
before I watch them
walk.

You bloom
between galaxies,
a whisper in the dark
where stars go quiet.

I’ve touched you
in the petal’s curl,
in pollen floating
through forgotten light.

You were a flower
growing from meteor stone,
a garden hidden
in the hush of moons.

Each orbit,
I return.
Each bloom,
you wait.

Life bites like frost on tender skin
sharp, unsparing,
a wind that forgets your name.

But even asphalt learns softness
where roots remember how to dream.
Light spills through the fractures,
not in spite of them
because of them.

And in the silent war
between concrete and bloom,
a dandelion wins.