It must be dark
out here in the cold penumbra,
where mile after mile
no one smiles,

dots and loops,
dots and loops,
a kind of blissful nullity,
beautiful and pointless,

wearing at the edges
it almost stings,
seclusion unraveling
at the underground in us all,

aubade aberrations abound,
challenging the orthodoxy
of the troublesome
morning road,

but should this near-life experience
hydroplane toward
another mineshaft, it helps to know
less is less, not more.

Morning unfurls—
thin gold draped over the terrace rim,
the world still dream-fed, undecided.

She moves through it—
wild-crowned in bramble and gold,
a flower skewed in her hair—
stem fractured, wind-touched
but worn as if it could never be
anything less than perfect.

Something in her
the way her chin tilts to the sky,
the way sunlight spills across
the same high cheekbones,
the same quiet brow—
pulls at something nameless
beneath my ribs,
a longing too tender to name.

Her laughter
windstruck — a ripple in the skin of dawn,
spins loose, untethered,
a sound without edges,
without destination—
just the raw, impossible ache
of something alive
for no other reason
than because.

The air folds around her
soft, golden-bellied
as if the whole world
was holding its own
watching, waiting—
for a beauty
too wild to know itself.

I watch too,
not out of wonder,
but out of fear—
that something so fleeting
could slip through this hour
without ever being written down.

She will grow
the flower will fall,
the wind will learn her name,
and the sky will no longer
be enough to hold her.

But for now,
she blooms only for the sun,
for the hush,
for the wild, unmeasured ache
of simply being.

And I swear—
if I could stretch this hour
into forever,
I would—
just to watch her run
one breath longer.

Some joys bloom for nothing—
not for the gaze, not for the name—
but simply because the sun is warm,
simply because they can.

I did not smile at her.
I smiled at the hush—
the unbearable miracle
of something wild
that does not know
it is precious.

The hush lingers,
the morning folds—
soft gold cradling a face
that no longer lifts toward the sun.

The air no longer waits.
Only I do.

And beneath my fingertips,
the photo trembles—
thin, timeworn—
edges curled like petals,
as if the years have tried
to fold her back into a bloom.

now, in this hush,
I turn to her—
and I smile.

She was my mother.
She was a girl once,
unwritten.

And I—
I have spent my whole life
trying to read her.