The Held Breath

You arrive mid-sentence, catching the word still shaped in my mouth— that moment when air holds shape, when sound hasn't yet released into the room's indifference.

The pause stretches like honey, thin and golden, the space where we almost understand each other, where the unsaid hums louder than any echo could dare.

Your hand reaches, mine withdraws— not fear, but the particular grace of letting something stay beautiful in its incompleteness, the way a constellation needs its darkness.

I have loved you in the silence between your question and my answer, in that breath we both held, in the grammar of what we didn't say, which was everything.