Hunger of the Hollow
Who whispers first
the earth or the bone?
Who sings the loudest
the living or the rot?

The Girl Who Would Not Stay
She walks on petals made of glass,
soft steps splitting the veins of the earth.
The sky drinks her shadow,
swallows her shape,
forgets her name.

She was never meant to hold weight.
Not here. Not anywhere.

The river curls, wet-lipped and laughing,
coiling around her ankles, pulling her in
“Come, child of the hush.
Come where the wind forgets to breathe.”

She touches the water.
It opens a mouth of teeth.

The Flowers Never Woke
A valley sighs, heavy with waiting,
roots threading through ribs of the long-left-behind.
The lilies shudder in their sleep.
The roses are hungry.
The flowers wilt.

She kneels, touches the soil,
but it does not reach back.

“What if I leave and nothing misses me?”
she asks the air, but the air is busy.
It does not answer,
neither does the sun
neither do the stars.

The clouds above burn
folds itself into fists,
wrings light into rain,
spills over in fits of golden hunger.

“Fall with me,”
it says, curling against the weight of its own skin.
“Fall and know what it means to be held.”
"Fall and know what is life's embrace"

She stretches a hand.
But she does not trust softness.
Not when it bends so easily to breaking.

The Worm they watch all above,
Beneath her feet, the earth shudders
a ripple of something restless, something waiting,
something that has never needed a name,
the unknown calls.

A worm, white as unstruck lightning,
unfolds from the dirt,
a thread in the loom of the forgotten.

“Do you know what it means to return?”
it asks, voice thick with the weight of all things buried.
“Do you know what it means to stay?”
"Do you know what it means to leave?"
In all things bright as day.

She does not answer.
She does not know.

She runs.
Because that is what the empty ones do.
Afraid of the unforseen.
Afraid of the known .

Through the hush of the valley,
through the hunger of flowers,
through the breathless cloud,
through the waiting worm,
until the gate—yawning, waiting, endless
takes her inside.

And she sees
bodies, folded and pressed like unfinished prayers,
hands reaching for something long since gone,
eyes black with the ink of every unspoken question,
each answer no told.

She sees herself.
Hollow-ribbed. Hunger-limbed.
A thing with no weight.
A name no one remembers.
Forgotten.

And the silence speaks:

“Why do you fear what you already are?”

She turns.
She runs.
She flees

but the gate does not let her go.
And the garden does not let her wake.