only the hum of roots buried deep

Poems.

To Her, Whose Poems I Adore.

You write as if you’ve known the cold

of winter long before you saw the snow—

as if the earth spoke to you

when it had nothing left to give,

only the hum of roots buried deep,

the slow unraveling of green.

I read your words,

as if through a veil,

and hear my own voice,

the one I’ve buried with the dead

and left there,

waiting for a season

to bring it back.

You speak of the garden,

but it is always the absence of flowers

that haunts you.

You speak of desire,

but it is always the wound

left untouched,

the bruise unbloomed,

the heart’s quiet surrender

to what it knows will never come.

I want to ask you—

what does it mean,

this hunger you name but do not feed?

What does it mean

to hold silence

like a stone in the mouth,

to offer it up,

not as prayer,

but as truth?

Still, I follow,

not to the end

but to the place where endings

are woven thin,

where your words unravel

just enough

for me to slip through.

I adore you,

not for the answers

but for the questions

you refuse to ask.

---

Labyrinth.

The labyrinth is not a place,

but a question you keep asking—

how did I get here?

The walls are your own hands

reaching for what isn’t there,

stone and shadow,

the endless turning back

toward yourself.

You believed in the center,

once.

A secret waiting to be uncovered,

a light or a voice

that would tell you:

This is the way.

But the center is empty,

and when you reach it,

all you find is silence,

the same silence

that has followed you

since the beginning.

The path twists,

doubles back—

you think you’ve been here before.

You trace the walls with your fingers,

a map of every decision

you didn’t make.

There is no exit,

only the slow unraveling

of desire,

the soft collapse

of certainty.

This is what you learn:

The labyrinth is not meant

to be solved.

It is meant to hold you,

to ask the same question

until you no longer need an answer.

You walk, and walk,

until the walls themselves dissolve,

and all that remains

is the quiet pulse

of your own breath

in the dark.

---

The Hunger of It.

There is something primal,

the way your body knows before your mind does—

how your skin tightens in the space between us,

how your breath betrays you,

quickening,

as if the air itself has learned desire.

I pretend it’s nothing.

I hold my hands still,

as if I haven’t imagined them

brushing the edge of your collar,

pulling you close enough

that I could feel the heat of you

without touching,

close enough that I’d have no choice

but to touch.

It’s the ache of restraint that defines us.

How we move through conversations,

your voice a low current

I keep trying to swim beneath,

as if, with enough silence,

I could understand

what your body is saying

without words.

There is the moment—

I know you feel it too—

where everything narrows.

Time presses its thumb

against us,

the world condenses into a breath,

a glance.

The way your mouth moves

when you laugh,

the small pause

when our hands nearly meet.

It is there, in the almost.

It is always there.

I think about the hunger of it,

the sharp edge of wanting,

how it cuts without wounding.

A blade just above the skin,

never breaking the surface.

I wonder what it would be like

to let it slip just a little,

to lean into the knife

and feel it carve away the space

between us.

You, unaware, or pretending to be,

hold a kind of power in this.

How you walk into a room

and change the air.

How I feel your presence

before I see you,

as if the body remembers what it has never had.

As if I have been waiting

for something I didn’t know

I wanted.

And yet, I say nothing.

I hold the want inside me,

fold it into the quiet parts of my day,

where it simmers,

low, constant.

Because there is a pleasure in this, too—

the not-having.

The desire itself becomes

its own kind of satisfaction.

As if the wanting were enough.

As if the body could survive

on hunger alone.

Still, sometimes I let myself imagine:

your hand in mine,

the small exhale of your body

as I pull you closer,

how my name would sound

in your mouth,

broken by breath.

It is these fragments I feed on,

the almost,

the just-barely,

the never-quite.

I tell myself it’s safer this way—

to leave the longing unspoken,

to let it linger in the air between us,

unsullied by the weight of touch.

But sometimes, late at night,

I think of what it would mean

to be devoured,

to let the hunger consume me whole.

And I wonder:

what would be left of me

if I did?