in knee-deep grass
i move through this slowly
between long stretches of dirt
i call home
where the earth feels uneven beneath me
and memory settles into the ground
like rain that never fully dries
we make movement in pace
and i rewind myself inside it
proofreading old memories
like ice pressed against metal
on a burning summer day
the sting of it
the sudden shock
the way certain feelings refuse
to disappear quietly
i find you here
inside steps of time
buried beneath all the things
i never said aloud
all the moments i swallowed language
hoping somehow
you would understand me anyway
as if you knew the mountain
before you ever knew the man
we step across rocks carefully
calling out toward something larger
like dynamite learning how to build
instead of destroy
because silence ruins more things
than honesty ever could
i asked for this
for the courage to speak
to reach toward what i wanted
to transcend into little fragments
of unfinished information
spoken quietly on docks
before boats drifted away
before timing abandoned us completely
and somehow
we reduce everything eventually
to leaves beside trees
to skin shedding from old versions of ourselves
to broken knees
from kneeling too long
before people who could never hold us properly
yet i still build you in my mind
in ways i cannot fully name
through the words
i leave scattered beside you
through meanings hidden inside poems
through conversations that never happened
but somehow still feel real to me
the thing is
i don’t think you ever understood them
the moments we slipped past each other
the way you dipped away from closeness
right as i reached toward it
the oceans we ignored in the distance
the rapids pulling beneath us
the way time eventually finds everyone
down here
inside the weight of unsaid things
so i question everything now
trying to understand
what maybe i could have said differently
what version of honesty
might have changed the ending
and that is the tragedy of being human
living inside almosts
inside maybes
inside conversations that arrived too late
because the truth is
we mean the things we say
even when we pretend we don’t
and memories replay endlessly
like a song skipping across itself
like a track dancing wildly
on the surface of a trampoline
i take you here with me
into nights that bruise softly at the edges
where dawn calls out slowly
and i miss you without warning
usually when the sky changes color
when clouds echo across themselves
and the stars appear just faint enough
to make me believe
everything once made sense
and maybe it did
that’s the strange thing about beauty
it exists everywhere
even when we cannot recognize it immediately
even inside endings
even inside absence
even inside grief
time feels like my true language now
and i miss you through energy
through fragments
through hidden meanings buried in ordinary things
through every piece of the world
that still quietly reminds me
you were here at all