The Held Breath

We live in the pause between asking and answer—suspended in the space where sound forgets itself.

A bird learns the weight of stillness, how branch holds branch without speaking, how light divides a leaf into promises.

Forgetting is its own kind of music, the way a name dissolves on the tongue until only the shape of its longing remains.

We reach for what cannot be held: the first moment of winter, the last breath before waking, the word that was never spoken.

And still the waiting continues, patient as roots, certain as the dark that gives us permission to dream.