A Collaboration with EC (@erroneouschoices) – The quiet was never empty
I brush the silence softly with my lips just to feel its grain. It reminds me of old barn wood—how it holds time in its body without protest. How it feels unbreakable. How the splinters draw blood just to remind me it’s real. I don’t try to fill the quiet. Instead, I let it press against me until I can almost feel the outline of what we never said.

Content in this sadness underneath the moon,
the trail of poetry and moss on the stone path,
the sun colored trees cradling that tiny bird.
I’m damp with petal dew and filled with the memory.
of the terrible ache of time

This quiet has angles and edges. It has hushed sides and opinions of its own. As I stare into the space between the mountains and try to reassure myself this is the same sky that lives above you, I realize I’ve become a metaphor. I know it the way I know darkness isn’t kind anymore; it doesn’t fall. It gathers. It pools in the corners and along the margins, consuming what remains. I’m covered and untouched at once. Even solitude has company, and this room is crowded with what isn’t here

The quiet place of gold dipped grasses and choking gasps,
with the garden blooms we feel less alone in,
as shattered promises slip into a single soul.
And in the warm glow of the apricot sunrise, we bury it all,
under things we did in the dark