No Cracks, No Warnings

We are all just particles 

blurred at the edges,

never fully here or there

At any moment we might stay,

or leave,

or hover in the in-between

Because choosing is hard,

and certainty was never promised

Most of us are afraid

of what waits on the other side

We orbit it,

invent stories,

pretend we’re ready

when we aren’t

We cling to this side of the barrier

as if holding tighter

might bend 

the laws of the universe.

But you?

you spoke of it

not with dread,

but with that sharp, lit-up mind,

that way you had

of making the infinite

feel almost within reach

And then, it happened.

Not a grand event

Not a flash of light

Just the barrier giving way

quietly, inevitably.

letting you through

No crack, no sound,  no warning

Only the space where you stood

and the unbearable knowing

that you were already gone

Now you see us,

and we cannot see you.

Your intelligence, your humor,

your whole electric presence

slipped through the wall

clean, sudden, still

Into a place

our hands and our questions

cannot reach

Quantum tunneling, like death,

is no magic; merely a rule that holds

whether we understand it or not:

a barrier, an energy,

and the moment someone we love

passes through it

while we remain; pounding at a surface

that never yields, never even ripples

One instant, you were here.

The next: part of a silence

so vast, it collapses the air around it

And we keep breathing

on this side of the wall,

because there is nothing else to do

While you? you travel, 

to wherever particles go

when they do not return

and make sunlight happen

Rewriting old poems

V1: Why the tortoise got its shell 

Since the time a mountain

was eased onto

my philanthropic back,

I turned a nomad

home is where I am alive,

and so I carry my heart, my beak,

eyes, innards, skin and soul,

so no hope, nor fears are left behind

Home is somewhere to hide

my bruised fingers

from when I touched the fire

of your cardinal desire

My shell, polished into

brooches and necklaces,

combs, hairpins, frames for eyeglasses

delicate works of bekko art.

A sour old man's curse, this home, mine

to wear as a wedding present that never arrived,

weighing down on my need to roam,

to not run in the race

oh, to be a nomad.

V2: Why the tortoise got its shell

Since the time a mountain 

was eased onto

my back,

I turned a nomad

home is the weight that keeps me

tethered to this earth

I carry my heart, my beak,

even the hollow places where hope used to live

nothing escapes. Nothing is left to chance.

Home is somewhere to hide 

my bruised fingers 

from when you touched the fire 

of your cardinal desire.

This home, a sour old man's curse,

I wear it like a wedding gift that never arrived,

weighing down on my need to roam, 

to not run in the race, to simply drift,

the way a nomad does.

Coins

The coin rolled on and on,

teasing the already finished

with fresh hope each time my phone

pinged with spam, family, work.

Not a single word from your side,

except maybe these clouds

that sit over June like unread messages.

I wanted to drop it into many open hats

of street musicians, let it ring

against someone else’s afternoon.

Even today, I don’t think I am 

truly done. 

Faded maps

My faded map of the moles on your face, 

remembers  sometimes the way hands 

cupped cheeks. Each time I redraw 

the map with a singular wish 

to hold you close. 

My map of moles on your face

draws itself sometimes;hands

remembering cheeks before I do.

Each time I redraw it, the distances

keep getting larger. 

Beginnings and endings

One was broken. The other, reckless. One was greedy. The other, naive. It started with a touch. Every love story begins the same way: a moment of recognition. Eyes meet. The soul knows, there, the mislaid key from lifetimes before. And everything changes, though you won’t understand how much until later.

I was lonely before you.

What works in your fingers? What stuck in your voice? What is it in your skin that sets my whole being on fire? Whose song do you have on your lips?

After comes the middle. Where poets and certain songs live. Where the ordinary earth becomes ethereal. Thoughts and bodies fly. Freedom in the space between heartbeats. Lightness. Warmth.

Sometimes that warmth lasts a lifetime. Sometimes you get a tiny repeat glimpse, a gesture, a turn of phrase and you’re falling all over again.

Sometimes, years later, you’re grateful it ended. Because the wound through which the light pours would never have come to be otherwise.

But here’s what nobody tells you about the after.

The breath never quite settles. You remain lost to the world. They’ve found another way to get to heaven. But here you are, still playing their song. Still looking at bridges, birds and trees. Waiting for someone to see how special you are for seeing those birds, for naming them.

You walk streets where no one knows the version of you that they did. You name the birds to empty air.

And if there is no end to love, then this is what it costs, the ache that won’t close. The wound that never scars over

A poem about everything & nothing

This city glows beneath the night

a glare that offers no direction,

lit by screens that spark brief delight

in distant love and absent connection

This life aches for something to hold,

a tether m: emotional, real, and bold

But it wrestles with a quiet desire

for weightlessness, to float higher

In the amber hush, I sit and dream,

you return, my constant theme

We know the years will march ahead,

we’ll meet, converse, embrace what’s said

that thought, my comfort, softly spread

Yet still, I yearn for consequence:

for dreams, for thoughts, for acts immense.

And I wish the same for you

a life of meaning, raw and true,

with moments no money can pursue

Cheating

They cheated you of softness 

Of the easy kind of love they hand out

like candy in storybooks.

They cheated you of warm hugs at

the end of hard days,

of a voice that said, “I see you, you matter.”

They left you to build yourself with empty hands,

to stitch your own heart with threads made of silence and longing.

And you grew a garden in the hollow

they left behind.

You taught your soul to stay tender,

to give freely, to believe in love

even when it showed up late,

or small, or not at all.

You are a miracle they forgot to imagine