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.

—

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 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.
—

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.

—

i didn’t name it.
 it arrived.

not as pain.
not as form.
but
 as
  unfolding.

the body
 didn’t respond.
it recognized
 a grammar
  older than voice.

i was not afraid.
but fear
 took shape
  inside my knees.

i let it
 not to resist,
 but to witness.

knowing
 is always
  too late.

i stood
 not as ending,
 but as
  not knowing
   how
   to stay
    without form.

sometimes,
 you walk through
  your own skin
   like it’s someone else’s hallway.

and the floor
 doesn’t explain
  what it holds.

—

meaning
 touches last
  but leaves first.

—

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

this page
 is not written.

it
 waits.

__

(the structure holds only because it broke.)

__

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.