The In-Between

The space between heartbeats holds more than the beat itself— a small death, a small resurrection, the hinge on which being turns.

Your hand reaches across the table but the table is a country, your fingers the last light leaving. I am the dark that waits on the other side.

Speech arrives like weather, unpredictable, drenching everything, then retreats to show us what was always there— the shape of absence, the sound of listening.

In the gallery of unspoken words, the paintings are most vivid, their colors the colors of what we almost said, what we chose not to say, what will never be said. This is the masterpiece we cannot frame.