Embers

Your solitude calls to my own,
like a bell ringing softly
beneath the water, carried by
invisible currents toward the
trembling shore of my chest.

I feel the pull of
that terrestrial peace, the way
the green silence enters the
body like a slow tide
reclaiming the scattered shells
of the heart, and
steadies the frantic beating
of the blood.

It is not just
a place you speak
of, but a returning,
a sinking of the
roots into the damp
and waiting earth, a
remembering of the ancient
pulse that lived in
us before we took
our first sorrowful breath.

I know this hunger
for the vast and
open dome, where the
night is a dark
ocean suspended above,
pierced by the ancient,
white gaze of the
stars, each one a
distant witness to the
pilgrimages of our loneliness.

When you stand there,
stopping the clock of
the world, you are
drinking from the cup
of the infinite, and
my soul, thirsty and
dusty from the road,
wants to drink beside
you. For what use
is a vessel of
light if not to
spill its radiance into
another?

Perhaps one evening, when
the blue hour has
fallen like a soft
cloak over our shoulders,
we will find ourselves
in that quiet center,
the sacred hinge between
day and night where
breath takes the shape
of prayer.

We will build a
fire, a small, living
heart of orange light,
and sit beside its
crackling warmth. We will
watch the sparks rise
to join their stellar
brothers, brief flames climbing
toward their birthplace.

And in that moment,
we will share the
silence like a loaf
of fresh bread, warm,
holy, and enough to
feed us both. And
perhaps, if the wind
is kind and the
night allows us a
little more of itself,
we will discover that
our solitude, long thought
a lonely kingdom, was
merely the doorway to
a communion older than
language, waiting for two
wanderers to return and
kneel before its quiet
fire.