I remember a day,
sun-scorched and breathless,
somewhere in the middle of summer
which summer it was, I can no longer say.
But the moment sits clean in my mind.

I had wandered into the mountains,
into a fold of stone and shade,
and there I found it
a quiet pool, fed by a waterfall,
that thundering giant that still grasped the moment gently,
its voice deep and eternal,
like breath drawn from the belly of the earth.

I often wondered
if this was how God spoke.

It was a place of stillness,
where questions could be asked
without the burden of reply
or the worry of judgment.

I was not the first to stand there,
nor would I be the last.

Birds skimmed the air like thoughts,
bees murmured over wildflowers,
and the scent—oh, the scent
was one I knew
but now find indescribable.

Creatures great and small kept their distance,
yet shared the silence with me.

I dipped my hand into the quiet pool
and picked up a water-smoothed stone,
still cool in my palm,
and held it tightly for a minute,
unafraid it would break
under the clutch of my tightening grip.

Then I closed my eyes and thought,
finding a place neither inside nor out
not in words,
but in that interior language
only silence understands.

For that moment, I disappeared
transported.

Only me and the stone,
echoing the tranquility
that lived in the air and light.

I lingered in my mind
and found my way back to reality.

With slow breath,
I opened my eyes
and cast the stone into the pool,
casting all that was
and had been there before me.

Ripples broke across the mirrored sky.
I searched the wavering reflection for something great
truth maybe, or just a shape I recognized.

I was young then.
Not yet old,
but aware that time had passed.

The long days taught me
that time doesn’t rush.
It moves like water,
swallowing the stone without judgment.

I left that quiet place
with answers to questions
I had not thought to ask.

Many years passed.
The path I walked
was filled with laughter
and with sorrow
with questions.

I returned, older, though not old,
to that same pool,
seeking again
what cannot be named.

And as before,
I threw a stone,
and watched the ripples spread.

“This,” I told myself,
“is life.”

The water keeps moving,
soft and steady
but time…
time just stands there, doesn’t it?
Watching, not lifting a finger.
Not even having fingers, maybe.

I’m standing here now,
somewhere between
all I remember
and what has been,
and whatever comes after.

And I look down
and there I am, looking up.

It’s strange, really
like we don’t quite believe in each other anymore.
Or maybe we never did.

And still I ask
quietly, maybe foolishly
what does any of this mean?
Why am I still looking for something
that probably doesn’t want to be found?

I stare into the stillness,
dragging up whatever I can from below.
Truth, maybe?
Or something shaped like it.

The stones down there
smooth, silent,
left by my hands,
and maybe by others too.

Isn’t that how it goes?
We leave our joys behind like artifacts,
and our choices settle like silt,
while time flows like water
slow and steady.

But is this what it costs
this need to see too much,
feel too deep?

Do we trade connection for introspection?
Is that all I’ve become?
Just a voice bouncing off the water,
off the trees,
off the empty air?

Then I ask myself again
what even is prayer?
Is it really just talking to yourself
and hoping someone else is listening?

Is it a mirror too?
Like looking at the reflection looking back at you.
Like a story that starts out foggy,
but if you keep reading,
you begin to see a face,
a presence
and it’s not quite yours,
but it knows you.

Maybe that’s what poetry is too
a place between the real and the maybe.
Not about what’s true or false,
but what flickers in-between.

And when it’s honest
really honest
maybe poetry is religion without the costume,
and maybe religion, at its best,
is poetry without the ego.

Right here, in this quiet,
they meet in a way
that doesn’t trick you,
and doesn’t try to impress.

They just… exist.
And I guess I do too.

Still here.
Still wondering.
Still being.
Throwing smooth stones
into quiet pools of life.

In the province long forgotten where clouds rarely broke and stars whispered only to the patient, and the rivers spoke softly to those who listened,
a traveler reached a monastery carved from lime stone and time.
The weary traveler bowed low before an old monk, his heart was heavy
and asked softly:

“How do I know if the partner I’ve chosen is the right one?”

The monk stirred a *** of broth,
and motioned toward two chambers in the monastery.

“One room,” he said, “is made of ice.
The other holds only a small flame and an empty chair.”

He gestured for the traveler to step into the first.

Inside the ice room, the air hung heavy.
Nothing moved.
Even the traveler’s breath felt like regret frozen mid-thought.

“There are partners like this,” the monk said.
“Their presence stills everything
not with peace, but with numbness.
They do not speak to be heard,
but to drown.
Their affection is not given, only weighed.
Their world is always winter,
and they ask you to be snow.”

Then he led the traveler to the second chamber.

A small flame danced quietly in the center,
casting shadows that looked like possibilities.

“And then there are partners who carry fire—not to burn, but to warm.
They ask nothing you must bleed to give.
They speak gently,
but your soul listens.”

“With them, silence is not punishment.
Stillness is not withdrawal.
Love is not transaction.”

The traveler sat in the warmth and closed their eyes.

“But how do I choose?” they whispered.

The monk knelt beside the flame.

“Sit with them.
Do not ask them to explain who they are.
Instead, ask yourself who you become beside them.”

“If you shrink,
if your joy hides,
if your spirit folds itself smaller just to fit
you are in the ice.”

“But if you unfold,
if your voice returns,
if your laugh forgets it was ever caged—
you are with the fire.”

The traveler wept quietly,
not from sorrow,
but from remembering warmth.

And so they left with no map,
but a truth burning gently in their chest.

I’ve been walking this path longer than I meant to.
The trees along the side don’t talk anymore, and neither do the birds sing,
and the hills blur together as one
far and wide
like excuses in someone else’s mouth.

Funny how distance never explains itself.
You look back and it seems like forever or minute,
and the sharp things start to disappear:
the cliffs, the fear, the hopes,
even that voice you loved now just slips between reality and illusion.

We think about that love sometimes.
“That love”—you know the one.
Who first brought butterflies,
then left moths.
That was months ago,
or years,
or last week.
Depends who’s asking.
Just look how the bruises show,
and you wonder how you let them sink their fangs into you.

They left like a season that decided to skip town,
a breeze blown stronger than the wind
when it was convenient.
No letter,
no text message,
just one day, out of the blue,
they decide today was the day
my name didn’t mean warmth anymore,
and the time shared was meaningless
left you climbing up the walls to escape the sinking feelings that you try to hide.

I think it was then
I started wandering a lonely road.
The road less traveled—or was it just the only one left?
That’s where I met a guy
pushing a shopping cart
held together by plastic ties and prayer.
He told me he stopped counting miles
once the ground stopped being polite.
He said the hard part
wasn’t the walking.
It was knowing
nobody waits at the end.

We shared a smoke
and didn’t say anything profound.
But I remember the silence in that moment.
I think that mattered more than the smoke to both of us.

Some days
my hands smell like metal and sweaty palms.
Other days
I forget what I used to want from life.
I write,
I sleep,
I try not to watch the news.
Sometimes,
I look at life like it owes me an apology.
But it doesn’t.
Not me.
Not you.
It is what it is.

There’s a joke in all this,
I think
how nothing stays,
but the wounds still pile up.
How sorrow doesn’t have a face,
but somehow still wears your hoodie
and that Anon mask,
and it doesn’t stop kicking your ***.

People say
it gets better.
Does it? Really!?
Are they sure?
Or is that just cold comfort?
And maybe it does.
But better isn’t always different.
Sometimes
it’s just quieter
the same ****,
just another day.

And you keep going.
Because you do.
Because you have to.
Because the road
doesn’t care what you’ve been through,
who you are,
or who you lost,
or what you think you know.
It only knows forward.

And so forward we must walk
until one day,
there’s no more path,
and the journey quietly ends.

It’s then you realize
paradise was always in your soul.
We’re all just lost
dragging bruises through the labyrinth.
But still
We keep on going anyway.

A leaf moves
we call it thought.

Silence gathers shape
then slips the name.

Truth is only still
until we touch it.

Even the sun
casts doubt
when it breaks.

The question walks,
but never arrives.

I sit alone with thought, as one might face the sea in a wild storm,
watching tide rise and fall as waves stitch themselves into the distant horizon,
looking for reason
a pattern not of answers, but suggestions to what it all means.
My heart, fallen like time-felt dust, fluent in silence,
presses against the sky of night.
There is a pause where nothing waits
but the ache of wanting.

But is it wanting at all,
to know that which is there but we cannot see?
Or just a hunger fed on shadows of stories past?
I look inward while minutes skim twilight and ask myself
does longing hold meaning,
or am I chasing fading smoke across empty waters?
Can my wanting soul truly grasp what the mind denies,
or am I tangled in a web of falling false hope?

I looked to the constellations, not to find myth,
but for questions never answered by books.
Each sound and syllable of starlight now maps a wound I carry
a place absent and void,
where light has left and only memory dwells.
I have stretched my hand all too often,
running fingers over scar
to reach is to lose the clarity of surface.

Yet, does losing clarity mean losing truth?
Is doubt the thief of certainty, or its keeper?
I feel the mind’s sharp edge slicing the quiet in me,
cutting away comfort, cutting away belief,
cutting away illusions I once wore like skin.
But the soul protests, whispering of a depth
that reason cannot fathom, touch, or name.

It is not despair—oh, not yet.
For something unseen walks behind my wondering,
my elusive questionings.
Yet quietly it does not speak,
only shifts the air just enough
for me to feel the ground shake beneath each footstep,
to remind me:
the world listens,
even in its hush.

Is this just self-delusion’s gentle hand? I often ask myself.
While I walk and wrestle with silence all too often
is it a veil, a prison, or a gift?
A curse with a poet’s name?
And when the world’s noise swells like storm-lit waves,
drowning the quiet tides I seek
the clamour of scrolling screens,
the fleeting truths of countless tongues,
each beckoning with noise and urgent distractions,
pulling eyes and hands away
from the core meaning of the question

Do I blame the noise, or my own tired will?
Is the hunger real, or just an echo,
born from fear of emptiness in this life?
Does the mind protect me from falling,
or chain me to a prison of doubt?

I feel the weight of a thousand shallow fires surround me,
fires burning bright but never burning deep,
consuming only the surface grasses,
never touching roots that drink the dark or consume the soul.

Can I be certain there are roots at all?
Or do I dream of darkness as a place to hide
from the blinding truths daylight demands?

And if I run from truth, do I deserve it?
If I question belief, does it still shelter me?
Is the skeptic in me the truer seeker
or just the coward afraid of being wrong?

In searching for those roots,
I begin to question the impulse to doubt within myself—
whether suspicion is itself a crafty disguise
worn by the part of my soul too tender to trust anything.
I let my uncertainty become a song sung high, a rhythm,
a sweeping tide rather than a wall.

But still, my mind screams for answers,
demands proof in logic and reason,
while my soul waits, patient, in the dark,
offering only feeling,
and cloning faith from flickers of hope.

Somewhere in this universe, along the trail of quiet stars,
I feel drawn by a pressure not forced,
not fierce, but firm—like wind knowing
how to lean without ever bruising the grass.

I start to believe in a gaze
that does not pierce but softens,
a regard not veiled by fear,
but shielded from being misunderstood.
I name it presence,
though it bears no name at all.

Yet every time I close my eyes and find the strength to reach for this presence in shattered hope,
my mind begins to whisper truths: illusion, mistake, desire.
The mind plays tricks, after all.
How can I trust what I cannot see?
How do I find faith when this doubt is the louder voice
wait—the only voice I’ve come to know?
How do I find belief when logic and reason
scream something more real than anything else?

There are days so still they crack with beauty,
their hollowness shaped like an answer never spoken.
Not absence, not longing—just the aftermath
of having needed too long without touch.
My thoughts become fixed as a fast,
a hunger refined into light
before darkness comes crawling.

But still, every new horizon that comes
shifts with each call to reason,
and the questions that remain in the silence
scatter every small truth I find.
Now obscured by the drifting shadows of meaning and inner noise,
my tired mind and weary faith is what
a lost ship adrift in a raging storm,
in a sea without north, nor compass, nor shore.

The more I search, the more the sky expands before my eyes
not into clarity,
but into vast unknowns.
Each star, a beacon of a new mystery.
Each silence,
a deeper riddle I dare not solve.

“I am mine,” whispers the voice in my spine,
“and all I carry is tension made radiant.
I am the pause before choosing,
and the weight of choosing after.
I do not stir war,
but I know the balance between stillness and strike.
I am not breath,
but the moment before breath begins again.”

Life—neither oracle nor flame—beckons,
not with certainty,
but with distance:
a journey older than any maps,
toward a cradle that might hold
either a poem,
or an echo
that once thought itself love.

And so I trace my star-thirsted mind,
through night’s vast tangle and the static hum,
seeking a core beneath the glittering distractions
a light that neither blinds
nor fades.

I learn that questions have no end,
and answers only open doors,
that true seeking is surrender,
and the deepest knowing
is to be lost.

I stood again where my breath vanished
on the edge of speaking
the air too still to carry even grief.
Around me, the world held its posture,
like it too awaited a reply
that would not come.

No flame descended, no tremor rose,
only the pressure of unbroken silence
folding itself around the questions
I hadn’t yet learned to stop asking.

Somewhere above, thought gathered
in a form I dared not name.
Not presence. Not absence.
But something in between,
watching itself through me.

I opened my mouth,
but what escaped me was not prayer, nor song
only the echo of unspent meaning,
a voice shaped more by question
than knowledge.

There are rooms in the soul
where even memory is forbidden.
In those, I build altars of fallen breath,
stacking each exhale like stone
to bear the weight of waiting.

If this is faith,
it does not comfort.
It requires no belief.
Only that I return each day
and listen for what I know isn't there.

Still, I do.
Not because I expect the silence to break,
but because I am part of its shape now
a line in its unwritten sentence,
the soft space between words
curled at the edge of speech.

If this life is an Unlit altar
I press my voice into the windless dark,
as if breath alone could shape an answer.
Knees sunk deep in brittle earth,
I offer silence where hymns once rose.

No fire falls. No veil stirs above me.
Only the hush of those illuminated stars
burning through questions
older than any creed.

Once this world felt held
a warm, unseen hand of meaning.
Now this endless sky stares back
these great eyes looking down: vast, flawless, and mute.

I build no temples, only marks in sand,
each one unseen before it's known.
A ritual of reaching
toward something that may never reach back.

Is this devotion or defiance
to keep shaping the shape of longing
when no hand returns the touch?

Still I rise,
not redeemed, not refused,
but marked by the gesture
of asking.