(can art occur without an artist?)

Maybe the question is wrong.

Maybe art doesn’t begin
 with the artist.
Maybe it begins
 with a condition.
A field.
A stillness.

Something opens
  and something enters.
Not summoned.
Not owned.
Just… appearing.

A melody you hum without knowing why.
A shape your hand draws while thinking of nothing.
A line that arrives mid-walk
 with no sender,
 but undeniable weight.

Did you make it?
Or did you just
 stop being in the way?

Art, sometimes, is what happens
 in the absence
 of authorship.

It doesn’t ask for identity.
It just needs
 an opening.

A body willing
 to vanish
  long enough
  to let it speak.

i didn’t touch her.
 but the air
  between our hands
   folded
    like it once did
      when closeness
        meant undoing.

she left
 before the door shut.
but her presence,
 a tilt
  in the chair,
   a wrinkle
    on the bedsheet
remained,
 louder
  than any word.

you don’t forget
 the scent
  of not-touching.
you carry
  the warmth
   that never reached
    your shoulder.

i didn’t say goodbye.
but the room
 still hears
  her silence.

—

Some sounds do not belong to instruments.
They live just after.
Or just before.

The echo the piano makes when no one is touching it.
The hum of a string not struck
 but shaken by something nearby.

The part of a voice
 when the singer forgets they’re being heard.

Sometimes the most important sound
  is the one that wasn’t played
    but was felt
      in the hand that almost moved.

There is a kind of music
  that only exists
    inside the listener.

I’ve heard more truth
 in the seconds between chords
 than in the chords themselves.

Because those seconds
    aren’t performed
    they leak.

And maybe that’s where the music
  stops pretending
  and becomes real.

I don’t remember what you said.
Not exactly.
Maybe not at all.

But I remember
how your voice
  lowered
  when you said it.

How it curled slightly
  at the edge,
 like a question
 that wasn’t safe to ask
 out loud.

Some conversations
leave no quotes.
No lines to repeat.

Just a hum.
A pressure.
The sense that something
 shifted.
Without needing a name.

I’ve forgotten stories.
Entire rooms of meaning.
But I haven’t forgotten
 the way you sounded
  when you almost broke.

Or when you didn’t.

Tone is the body of language.
It carries what words can’t.

And maybe
what we really remember
 is not what we heard
 but what we felt
 when we were listening.

the dogs come back to the porch they pretended to forget.
(scent instead of fruit. memory instead of love.)


i do not reach.
i remain.
like a field in autumn
where nothing grows
but everything waits.

they come not for the fruit,
but for the scent
of something
that once bloomed.

i am not flame.
i am the cigarette
left burning
in a tired hand.

i do not chase.
but they return
like dogs to the porch
they pretended
to forget.

power is when your silence
makes them speak your name
without knowing why.

⋯

i do not ask.
but i am gathered.
i do not cry out,
but you hear it anyway,
in the way i stay.

shoulders low,
like someone
who belongs to no one
but still hopes.

this body is
a barn
that no longer locks.

you step inside,
and dust forgets
its shame.

don’t call it surrender.
call it evening.
call it a name
too drunk
to spell.

between leash and longing,
there’s a path
back to me.

a candle
 burning in daylight
 still giving off heat,
  but no longer needed
  to be seen.

a river
 forgetting its name
 as it enters the sea.
not lost
  just larger.

a breath
 held so long
 it forgets who exhaled.

the silence
 inside a cathedral
 after the choir has left
 still echoing
 with something sacred,
 but unclaimed.

a shadow
 that keeps dancing
 even after the dancer
 has left the room.

You don’t have to erase the self.
It erodes on its own
  in the presence
    of real seeing.

they asked nothing.
still
 i answered.

not in word,
 but in the shift
  of weight,
  the arch
  in my back,
  the unguarded thigh.

it wasn’t language.
 it was consent,
  folded inward.

not yes.
not no.

silence
 ruptures
  when held too long.

what they took,
 they didn’t name.
but i
 answered
  in posture.

—

i tried to shape a word.
it scattered
  like heat
    across porcelain.

my mouth
  is no longer mine.
it folds
  beneath vowels
    it can’t bear.

a name was here.
  it slipped
    between “i”
    and whatever sound
      never arrived.

the sentence
  opened
not to explain,
  but to spill.

this isn’t silence.
  it’s the trace
    of something
      that nearly
        meant me.

language
  doesn’t fail.
it just
    lets go
      of its subject.

sometimes,
  the sentence coughs / not to speak / but to loosen / the jaw of memory.
—

(the structure holds only because it broke.)

__

i didn’t stay
as i.

i remained
as what
they,
   or it,
  or silence
     left in me.

a fold,
 not of cloth,
 but of consent.

the way skin yields
 when held too long.
the way breath
 flattens
  into listening.

what remained
 wasn’t memory
 but impression.
not thought
 but weight.

—

i stopped  
 being a form.  
i became  
 not walls,  
  but where  
   the light  
rests on the doorframe  
  after  
   someone leaves   
   absence  
   made structural.  

not echo.  
not trace.  
but  
 the floorplan  
  sketched by memory  
   walking barefoot.  

i didn’t remember a name.  
i remembered  
 how the light fell  
  when someone stood  
   too close  
    to the window.  

i didn’t say i miss.  
i  
 flickered  
  like dust  
   where breath  
    once lingered  
      like heat.  

a chair  
 held my name  
  better than my mouth.

a door  
 understood  
  the sound  
   of almost leaving  
    but not.  

i  
 wasn’t waiting.

i  
 was furniture  
  arranged  
   by what memory  
     had shaped.


walls  
 never forget  
  what leaned  
   against them.  


once,  
  the chair / creaked / not from weight / but from remembering / someone else’s posture.

—

You’ve finished reading.
But not everything ends when you close a page.

Some words stay
 not as memory,
  but as tuning.

And maybe now,
 when you walk,
  you’ll hear something
   between footsteps.

Maybe now,
 you’ll listen
 not for meaning
 but for presence.

And maybe the sound
 that never quite arrived
  is the one
   that stays.

voice is not emission.
it is sediment
 a fold made of
  held air,
  missed words,
  and the weight
   of being asked.

to speak
 after the i collapses
 is not to return
 but to resonate
  without center.

—

what remains
 is not word,
 but the fold
  between
 what you took
  and what forgot
   to resist.

this page
 is not written.

it
 waits.

__

i didn’t shift  
    because i lost.  
i shifted  
    because that’s how i stay.  
the voice in me  
    doesn’t belong to one body.  
it comes back  
    as spine,  
    as breath,  
    as skin  
each time  
    differently.

—

(this is not a beginning. just the place where names go when no one speaks them.)


i unlearn hiding.
not corrected. just seen.
not yours. already waiting.
a shadow returns
and the breath stays behind.

i do not open
but the door forgets to close.
not a woman.
not a man.
not a shape
you can keep.

the room moved.
my hands did not.
your voice arrived
like a wound with memory.

not stillness
but the collapse
of wanting something
you never asked.

i do not flee.
i remain.
not to be held
but to be
heard.

⋯

this was never control.
it was listening.
it was silence
before it had a name.

refusal
 is not retreat.
it is
 a contour
  drawn
    between
      two open hands.


—

my skin is
 a variable
  in someone else's proof.
left unsolved.
  still bleeding ink.

—

not indecision,
     but the way skin flinches
     before you touch
        probability
         folded
         into the shape
         of silence.

—

i didn’t return  
to the body.  
i returned  
  to the place  
    where the warmth  
       hadn’t yet left  
          the floor   
    where it once was   
    without being.


the floor didn’t ask.
it received
 my shape
  like ritual.

when i sat,
 it wasn’t rest.
it was
 a remembering.

i didn’t collapse.
i realigned
 with gravity,
 with skin,
  with absence.

my back curved
 like language does
  when it wants
   to mean
    but fails.

i didn’t remember.
but my breath
 found
  its previous form.

sitting
 isn’t starting over.
it is
 staying.

—

i was never one.
i was never alone.
every shape you called me
 i carried.
 i dissolved.
 i wore
  until it softened
   into breath.

he stood in me.
she opened in me.
they held.
it remembered.
silence shaped.

what remains
 isn’t choice.
 isn’t voice.

it is
 all of them
    the he, the it, the silence
 folded
  into a stance
  that trembles
  not from weight,
        but from the memory
        of holding.



for my sister
who walks with me
between words
and silence.

sometimes,
 holding
  means shaping space
   without sealing it.
—

i didn’t arrive.
 it did.
  or maybe he
   but not as self.
    as something
      already marked.

there was no voice.
only
  pressure
    with no source.

my weight leaned,  
      not away,  
             but toward what i knew.  
       my thighs held the line,  
               until memory pressed  
                      like a weight,  
                            not to break  
                                       but to enter.  

and i  
    did not vanish.  
        i leaned into presence.
it never said  
  a word.  
but my breath  
   caught   
     like it remembered
someone else’s name.

i became not-body,
  but reply.
not i,
  but reverberation.

there is a spine in me  
    that doesn’t bend  
        even when the edge of me folds.
the grip is not to take  
    but to frame.  
what enters me  
    is not theft.  
it is trust  
    when i decide  
        to open.

what entered
 wasn’t him.
 wasn’t it.
it was
  the self
    folding
      into shape.
and the shape
  spoke back.

—

what returns
 is not breath
  but its refusal.

not wound.
not memory.
just:
 a pulse
  with no origin.

you think
 you’re about to speak.
but the body
 has already spoken
  in tension.

—

meaning
 touches last
  but leaves first.

—

i didn’t grip.
i shaped
 my palms
  around
   your not-staying.

holding
 is not possession.
it’s
  a grammar
   of remaining
    without demand.

you leaned into me
 like rain
  leans into a roof,
not to break,
 but to respond.

my arms
 weren’t enough.
they bent,
 but didn’t
  keep.

the syntax was wrong.
not i hold you.
not you held me.
but
 there was
  a space
   that held
    our unforming.

—

i wasn’t touched.
 i was remembered.

your hand
 didn’t arrive,
  it replayed.

my skin
  wasn’t a place.
   it was
    what lingered
      after
       you left.

i didn’t move.
i echoed
   what once
    moved through me.

no pain.
no heat.
just
  what remains.
   the slow witness
    of not-me.

i am not this body.
i am
  the bruise
   that remembers
     your forgetting.

this skin
  isn’t mine.
it holds
  your shape
   better
    than i do.

no voice reached me.  
but i steadied.  
 not out of fear,  
 but to return  
  to the line  
   i vanish from  
    when i go soft.

i didn’t stay
  as i.
i stayed
  as what he //
   or it
    or silence
      left in me.

—

i didn’t find words.
i found
 vibrations
  in my throat
   like wings
    that forgot
     how to fly.

what came out
 wasn’t i.
it was
 a tremble
  that touched air
   but didn’t mean.

you asked
and i
 opened my mouth
  like a wound,
   not to speak,
   but to resonate.

every syllable
 was borrowed.
every vowel
 carried
  the ghost
   of weight
    once held
     in silence.

i wasn’t saying.
i was
 letting
  go.

i was
 letting
  you
   hear
    how unformed
     a voice
      can be.
—