The Interval

In the pause between heartbeats, a moth finds its constellation— wings dusted with the light of all the things we didn't say.

You left the door ajar, and I've been listening to silence the way it listens back, the way it knows our names.

There is a grammar to waiting, each moment a syllable we swallow, misshape, remember as something it never was.

The garden holds its breath at dusk. The stones remember their long sleep beneath the earth, and I remember you forgetting to remember me.