The body shook still, then crumbled into motes,
its boundary undone by time’s unyielding siege.
The air waited sedated, maligned with grief and dust,
a quiet ruin where form had lost its hold.
Stars impassive, silence wide and deep,
their light a watchful decay.
Within the wreck, the worm-world stirred,
a root uncoiled beneath the broken psyche.
From the stump, a green fuse pushed its shoot.
its leaves unpaused in the unfurling dark.
Through ruin, something new began to grow,
the wet root rhythm steady, sure, alive.
The body was gone, but the world transformed.
-
-
There is no birth.
Only light changing tense.The first spark
remembers the last ember.They speak each other’s name
across the plane.Darkness is not absence,
but the resting of illumination.What we call death
is light arriving
at its own beginning.The pillars fall,
and rise again,
in every eye that looks.Every ruin shines
with the same patience
that once built stars.There is no loss.
Only return,
folded through time’s delay. -
Before light,
the waiting.Before sound,
the listening.Time leaned forward,
but did not move.Silence
was its first creation.Then,
a tremor,
a thought of heat.Atoms gathered
as if remembering each other.Space unfolded,
slow as breath,
measuring itself
against nothing.Stars came
not as fire,
but as intention.Their glow
took aeons to arrive,
and in that lateness
the world began.All beginnings
are aftermaths
we misname as dawn.We are born
into echoes,
our first cry
already old.And yet,
the light goes on
becoming.
Thorn and Benediction 