He asks you, “how does a forest sound.”

there’s that veiled, monastic hush to everything,
not so much muffled,
words, (in your language or others,)
that cannot be understood save for their intonation,
vague fingerprints on your pearlescent neck.

you look up and there’s lace,
weaving itself matador armed through impossible eyelets.

straw falls out eventually,
your face hollows,
and eye sockets repurposed as homes for vines,
tendrils pushing upwards,

they breach the surface of the earth and take their first breath.