and I
had No
More
Tears

and Oh Skies!
and Oh Trees!

and I
had No
More
Voices

and the Universe
was rocking
as if into
Nothing

he didn’t ask.
  i didn’t want him to.
no command.
  no silence.
    only the slow
      shift
        of gravity.
the spine
  yielded first.
then
  the breath.
then

    the idea
      that this
        was ever mine.
he entered,
  not with force,
    but with weight.
and i
  did not open.
    i let go.
it wasn’t pain.
  but something
    fell
      from me.

or
  was pulled.

or
  never
belonged.
i remember the touch
  not as skin,
    but as
      a shift
        in pressure,
          a presence
            that never returned.
he didn’t say
  “mine.”
but i answered
  in the way
    my thigh
      stopped resisting
        the edge
          of being
              used.

—

Sometimes, I hear a song
through someone
else’s headphones,
 too quiet to name
 but loud enough to feel.

I never ask what it is.
Letting it stay anonymous
 feels more honest.
It’s not mine.
I was just near it.

A violin behind a closed door
  in an apartment I’ll never enter.
Footsteps on an old wooden floor above me
  like a rhythm nobody meant to write.
A man humming in the metro
  not to perform,
  but because he’s alone
    and forgot the world has ears.

There are moments I’ve been completely undone
  by a melody I never fully heard.

Half of it lost to the train.
Half of it blurred by walls.
But something in me
  was tuned
    just right
      to catch what escaped.

We think music is what’s played.
But maybe it’s also what passes through
      when we weren’t looking.
      When we didn’t try to hold it.
      Or name it.
      Or own it.

power is not force. it is presence that doesn’t leave.
(the one who stands and is drawn towards. not by command, but by gravity.)


i do not command,
i endure.
i do not move.
i remain
and so, draw.

not with force,
but with gravity.
the name silence wears
when someone listens
long enough.

i am not flame.
i am the hand
that might one day
be lifted.

power is not possession.
it is presence
that does not flee
when you need
to be seen.

⋯

you do not ask,
but wish to be held.
you are not pleading,
you are forming
a shape unfinished,
already breathing.

you do not surrender.
you open.
like a hand
where a name
wants to rest.

this is not weakness.
this is the dignity
of being known.

She sat alone, beside the door
not asking much, not asking more.

She didn’t wait for steps to fall
but for a glance.
No cry. Just call.

. . .

She wasn’t silent out of fear,
nor lost for words that wouldn’t clear.

She simply held that hush so deep
your broken soul
could rest, could sleep.

. . .

When you were cruel, she did not shake.
When you were low, she’d bend, not break.

She breathed like grass, a quiet thing,
forgave it all, just with a blink.

. . .

You could have left.
Or screamed. Or lied.
Or tossed your anger off with pride.

She knew it all.
She didn’t plead.
She breathed, just breathed
like hope, like need.

. . .

And if you left and never came
past morning’s hush, beyond the flame

she still would sit…
no names, no cries…
and watch the night
as if
it shines.

It came like weather.
No origin.
No request.

Just a shift in pressure
    inside the skin.
And something
  started speaking
    through my hands.

It wasn’t mine.
Not the phrase.
Not the image.
Not the ache it left.

But it needed a body
  to pass through.
And mine
  was open
    enough.

There are moments
when I read back what I wrote
  and feel
    like a stranger
    with my own voice.

Not confused.
Not proud.
Just…
  borrowed.

I don’t always know
 what I’m doing.
But sometimes,
 not knowing
  is what lets it happen.

Call it muse.
Call it current.
Call it memory
      from before this life.

I don’t need to name it.
Just not get in the way.

She was drawing,
not for anyone.
Not even for herself.

Just…
  because her hands needed to move.
The pencil didn’t ask for approval.
It didn’t perform.
It just followed
 whatever was humming
  beneath her skin.

I’ve seen someone dance
 in the middle of cleaning.
Not to music.
Just to rhythm.

A private conversation
 between body and gravity
     where
      I was only
       accidentally
             invited.

There’s a holiness
 in the movements people make
  when they don’t know they’re being seen.

Not holy because they’re beautiful.
But because they’re untranslated.

They’re not trying to mean something.
They just are.

I’ve started collecting these moments.
Not in pictures.
Not in notes.
Just
  in the place behind my ribs
  where wonder stays
  when it’s too quiet to name.

don’t
 touch me.
not because
  i break,
but because
  i forget
    where i end.


your hand
  doesn’t hurt.
but it
    shifts
  the lines
    between skin
      and silence.


i want
 to be
  held,
    but not taken.

i want
     the warmth
      without the aftersound.


when you
  touch,
    i disappear
      into the outline
        of your want.


i reach back
  not to stop
    but to
      delay.

to fold
  the moment
    before it
      becomes
        mine.


touch me
  but only
    as question.

never
  as name.


—

You don’t have to invent it.
You never did.

The shape,
the sound,
the word -
they already exist
somewhere between breath and shadow.

You are not the maker.
You are the listening.
The soft animal that lets it pass through
  without tightening.

If it comes,
let it.
If it leaves,
don’t chase it.

You are not here
to hold it forever.
Only to host
  its becoming.

When your hands shake,
when nothing feels certain,
that may be the exact moment
you’re finally transparent enough
  to carry something real.

Don’t fill the silence too quickly.
Don’t rush to say it right.

Let it move
  through the ribcage,
    through the spine,
      through the wrist
like wind
         learning your name.

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.

It didn’t happen.
But it could have.

And that “could”
  still glows
    in the dark of me.

We never kissed.
But there was a second
 when your breath
 found mine
  not touching,
  just measuring the space
  where it might.

That second
  lasted longer
  than entire nights.

We didn’t say it.
But the air between us
  knew.
Not the meaning,
  but the weight.

And maybe
that’s the truest kind of intimacy -
the one that doesn’t insist,
  just lingers.

What didn’t unfold
  still forms me.
Not as memory,
but as shape.

A bend in how I move.
A shadow I do not fear.
A pause
  I’ve learned to live inside.

i do not touch. i breathe near enough for you to imagine it.
(somewhere between leash and language  i unlearn hiding.)


i do not touch.
but breath comes close enough
to become memory.

you move,
but it’s your chest
that confesses.

nothing happens,
but your bones shift
like something did.
that’s enough.
that’s control -
the kind you want
to call yours.

my hands stay
where they are.
but the room doesn’t.

you say my name
like an accident.
i answer
like a consequence.

they ask what i am.
i say:
not a man.
not a woman.
not a prayer.
a door that only opens
if you stop asking.

⋯

this is not asking.
this is return.
your shadow pressed
against mine
without needing names

i am not waiting.
i am already yours
in the way silence owns
a scream
that never got out.

don’t call it submission.
call it:
the warmth of being seen
& not corrected.
ƃuᴉʇɔǝɹɹoɔ ʇou &
uǝǝs ƃuᴉǝq ɟo ɯɹɐʍ ǝɥʇ
:ʇᴉ llɐɔ

somewhere between leash
and language
i unlearn hiding.

(after a night before dawn)

Last night, in the dark
before the world remembered light
I walked a field:
  wheat, or poppies,
  or something left behind
  by something that once loved the sun.

And there,
  not waiting,
  not departing,
  was death.

Not a blade.
Not a silence.
She was seated (or maybe had fallen),
  like a prayer
   forgotten mid-kneel
   soft, unfinished and
    unheard.

Her eyes
  held the curve of a question
  too old for answers,
  too tired for fear.

We didn’t speak.
We had no need.
We were not mirrors
but echoes,
  trying to remember
  which silence we belonged to.

For one breath,
(maybe longer),
I thought:
   she needs me.
And something kind began to rise
  not from mercy,
  but from something lonelier:
recognition.

But she had found me too.
And maybe she thought
   I had something left
   to offer.

We were wrong
  about each other.
But right
  so achingly right
about the sky.

I had no name
  to give her.
She had no end
  to lend me.

So we breathed.
And the field,
  if anything,
  felt fuller for it.

Then I walked
  not away,
  but toward whatever
    was beginning
      behind the horizon.

Easter approaches.
And sometimes,
resurrection requires
  no witnesses
only
  the will
   to keep walking
    until light
      remembers
       your name

Long after the music ends,
 the body remembers.

Not the melody
 but the weight of it.
Where the shoulders softened.
Where the fingers held a pause.
Where breath curled around a silence
  and didn’t let go.

The body doesn’t archive like the mind.
It doesn’t recall in sequence.
It remembers in tension.
In residue.
In the way your spine knows
  when something is about to fall.
In the twitch that follows
  a note that’s already gone.

Sometimes, I move like something
  I once heard.
Not consciously.
Just
  a rhythm finds my step
      years later
      and walks me home.

There are gestures
  I no longer know the names for
 but my body still offers them
  like a language it trusts
      more than thought.

Maybe this is how memory stays kind:
  not by being exact,
  but by letting itself
    be danced.