Not as a gale, not as a thunderclap,

Poems

The Quiet Thread.

I think of you,

not as a gale, not as a thunderclap,

but as the soft pull of the tide

curling against my ankles—

steady, relentless,

a quiet insistence.

In the mornings, when the gulls scatter

like paper blown across the sky,

I wonder if you wake to the same light,

if your breath, too, stirs

the pale curtains of an open window.

I walk the lanes of my life,

under canopies of ash and sycamore,

and there you are again—

the golden shadow,

the unspoken word

woven into the weave of the day.

Distance is nothing,

or everything.

And still, I carry you,

like a pebble tucked into my palm,

its weight a sweet ache,

its smoothness a promise—

of what, I do not know.

Only this:

that the world is larger now,

brimming with the sharp green scent

of longing,

and all the small, wild things

seem to know your name.

---

The Invisible String.

I have heard the physicists speak of it:

a particle split across galaxies,

still trembling

in unison,

as if some secret thread

binds the unseen halves of a whole.

What wonder to be tethered like that,

even in absence—

a connection that defies the yawning dark,

the quiet indifference of the stars.

And yet, here I am,

entangled in my own way,

orbiting the thought of you.

Your name rises unbidden,

like a signal caught in static,

a brief and brilliant pulse

before the silence reclaims itself.

Perhaps the universe

is only made of this:

pairs of longing,

scattered across distances

that can never be breached.

But still, when I close my eyes,

I swear I feel you stir—

a flicker, a ripple,

some echo of movement

on a plane I cannot see.

What is loneliness,

if not the measure of what was once whole?

What is love,

if not the hope

that even the vastness of space

cannot sever us entirely?

---

The Shape of Desire.

It begins in the shadows,

a flicker of something unnamed—

not shame, no,

but the tremble of recognition

in the marrow of the self.

Here is the body,

its language,

its wild, unspoken prayers—

the way skin answers touch

like fire answers wind.

We speak in signals,

in threads of silk,

in the soft bite of leather,

the rush of surrender

or control held taut,

a bowstring drawn tight.

This is not deviance;

it is the map of a secret country,

where consent is the compass

and trust, the unbroken path.

See how the body blooms

under its own peculiar sun,

how it turns to meet

what once felt unspeakable.

Desire wears so many faces,

but this one—

this tender, electric hunger—

is ours,

and it hums with a kind of truth

that only the brave can bear.

---

The Stillness of Frost.

Morning comes like a held breath—

the earth silvered and stunned,

each blade of grass laced with frost,

every branch etched in crystalline quiet.

The leaves lie where they fell,

their once-golden bodies curled inward,

as if mourning the sun’s departure.

They have become paper-thin whispers,

breaking under the weight of stillness.

But see how the frost claims them,

turns their decay to something luminous.

Even in death, they glisten,

their edges rimmed with cold fire,

each vein caught in fleeting brilliance.

There is a beauty in this,

in the way the world pauses

to honor its own ending.

The frost is not cruel,

only exacting,

its touch both sharp and soft—

a silence that humbles.

And beneath it all,

the soil waits,

alive with the secret work of beginnings.

---

The Stretch of Time.

What is a second,

but a story told by a clock—

tick by measured tick—

a steady hand sweeping across

a circle we believe to be fixed?

But we know better now.

The equations betray the lie:

Time bending, stretching

as speed becomes the master,

the denominator

pulling moments taut like thread.

Out there,

near the edges of stars,

or plunging into the silent heart of a black hole,

an hour would pass for you,

while for me, a century.

What is this distance but heartbreak,

measured in dilation,

measured in lives I’d never see you live?

Einstein whispers:

gravity, too, warps time’s river.

Space and time folded,

curved like a hand

that never quite touches the one it reaches for.

What does it mean

to feel the pull of another’s orbit,

to love in frames that cannot align?

Your seconds are galaxies away,

your minutes swell to years

as I wait, and wait,

knowing our meeting is both certain and fleeting.

Perhaps the equations hold the answer:

not to fight the stretch of time,

but to marvel at its gift—

the way it bends to make us infinite

for just one moment.