the silhouette of my body
is a quiet shoreline at dusk
all curve and hush
outlined in borrowed light

it does not need to be seen
it simply stands
a dark bloom against the evening
soft thunder held in stillness

my shoulders are small horizons
my hips a slow question
the night leans in to answer

in shadow 
I am less detail
more feeling
a whisper shaped like a woman
a flame without flame
a story told only in outline

and somehow
in the absence of light
I become entirely myself

*Picture is my own*

we began as margins
empty spaces waiting for a hand
to spill ink into our quiet
you did not read me
you memorized the shape 
of my syntax
running a thumb 
along the rough cut of my edges
until the dust of old chapters cleared
revealing the spine
we are not written in a rush
we are the slow turn of heavy paper
the smell of old bindings 
and the afternoon sun
trapped between sheets of parchment

I have found myself folded down 
at the corner of your thoughts
a creased memory
you keep returning to in the dark
here in the white space 
between the paragraphs
where the author fell silent
we speak not in words 
but in the weight of punctuation
the soft exhale of a semicolon
the breathless pause 
before the next line begins
let the world close its heavy cover
let the shelves grow dark around us
we are pressed together 
in the quiet typography
two separate stories
bound into the very same breath

the path remembers us
every stone still holds
the quiet weight 
of your hand finding mine
simply to say
I’m here
and I love you

beneath these old trees
where even time hangs gently 
from the branches 
your fingers folded into mine 
like they had always known 
the shape of my loneliness

since then
every empty bench looks as though
it has been saving a place 
for the warmth we left behind
I could walk this road 
a thousand times alone 
yet my palm would keep searching 
for the memory of your touch

because some hands 
never really let go
they become 
the way you carry love
long after the path disappears