An orchestra of embers in the quarry of our words
We meet in the hallway between tongues,
your words arrive barefoot,
mine wear shoes that pinch.
I offer a sentence –
it blooms in my mouth like jasmine,
reaches you
as a handful of dry stems.
You smile in the wrong places.
I laugh half a beat late.
Our silences are fluent,
our speech
a quarry of mismatched stones.
Still, my heart plays its unruly symphony –
violins striking sparks on granite,
trumpets flaring like embers in wind,
each note a flare against your mountain calm.
In the pause between us
there is a hollow no kindness fills,
yet I keep planting –
hoping my fire will find –
your hidden vein of warmth,
and your stone remember
how to hold the sun.