Just one;
and the crowd disappears.  
Not the noise,  
but the ache beneath it.  

Your robe sweeps  
like the edge of a memory  
too sacred to name,  
too silent to forget.  

I didn’t ask.  
Didn’t shout.  
Just reached,  
as if the gravity of healing  
could be borrowed  
in a breath.  

Blood listens.  
Shame stills.  
Every fracture sings  
beneath skin mended  
by mercy  
I dared not deserve.

You turned.  
Not to scold,  
but to see me,
the me behind the reaching.  

And that touch?  
It was not mine.  
It was yours,  
returning everything  
I didn’t know I’d lost.

If paper and pen
understand me to my core,
then it is my voice that betrays me evermore.
I know better, yet opening up
stays my biggest fear.
I am surface-leveled,
neither there, nor here.
And so comfortably, with no fuss,
I stay a projection,
nothing more than dust.
I am your imagination,
no depth,
no width.
I am only but a shell.
An empty figure,
stripped of will and vigor.