Adrift in salt waves,
Closer to sea than to roots
Mountains keep still.

I didn’t want
to wake up today,
As I look
into the mirror,
I see myself,
Rugged, pieces
Here and there,
Almost handsome,
Almost there
But good enough,
I get out the door,
Jump into my car,
Notice the tags
Still say 2024
As I press
The gas pedal
And feel the machine
Alive once more,
I have to get
around that
Some day.

I
Flamboyán whispers,
wrapped gently by the nightfall
the coquí sings true.

II
Clouds become soft quilts,
dreams live curled in the branches
under a sky full of stars.

III
The breeze calls my name,
it smells of earth and heartbeat
my soul finds its rest.

I find myself here
Under the sycamore rain,
Again, loving you.

The seasons shift and change,
Flowers wilt and die to bloom,
The stars burn- dim or bright but they do.
And I? I remain the same.

I keep running round in a glass cage,
They all see me but not the weight.
Trapped and tired and all in vain,
And yet when I trip and finally fall,
I ask myself- why can't I change?

Some things are too whole
to be spoken.

A look.
A breath that almost turned into speech.
The way your shoulder moved
  before the apology
  that never arrived.

We speak so much
  just to hide
  what we actually feel.

But the unsaid -
 it sits quietly
 in the space behind your teeth,
 in the silence between names.

It doesn’t fade.
It settles.

I remember the pause
 more than the sentence.
The moment before
 you almost said
    “don’t go.”

But didn’t.

And that
  has echoed longer
    than any goodbye.

What we don’t say
 doesn’t disappear.
It becomes
 the resonance
    beneath everything we do.