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I began where the world was small and green,

counting the heartbeats of quiet beasts,

the air thick with a lucky, unburdened light.

I was a creature of the open yard,

mischief moving through the high grass

before the maps were drawn,

before the long winter arrived.

Then the horizon broke at the yard’s edge—

a sudden iron weight, a sharp theft of breath.

The right side of the world went dark,

the body redrawn in heavy, stubborn lines,

and the boy who ran was left behind.

The air turned thick and unfamiliar,

and the doors of the loud world slammed shut.

I became the stranger in a foreign climate,

carrying a quiet no one knew how to speak to.

For decades, I have lived along the perimeter,

a solitary drop watching the ocean move in pairs.

I left the crowded tables to the daylight people,

withdrawing into the cool sanctuary of the mind.

Stone by stone, in the silence of great halls,

I forged a kingdom out of ink and thought,

moving across changing hills,

standing before rows of empty eyes to pass down the flame,

yet always returning to the house with one chair.

I can navigate the vast, invisible stars of the intellect,

but I am lost in the simple country of a hand held out.

At 3:00 AM, the old questions still circle the ceiling:

How do you cross the distance between two rooms? What is the word that makes a stranger stay?

The solitude is a heavy coat I never chose to wear,

yet I wear it like armor now.

I am a builder of quiet history, waiting on the border,

hoping an eye will look past the heavy frame,

and love the hidden, wild music of a heart still ready to be known.

We walk among the stones and read the verbs of the dead, forgetting that ‘lived’ was once a roaring, active thing.

To them, the century wasn’t a chapter in a textbook— it was a shadow lengthening across the floorboards, it was the current price of flour, the ache in the lower back, the absolute certainty of ‘now.’

They were just like us. They hurried through the rain.

They let the door slam, regretted the harsh word, and looked at the very same stars we see tonight, wondering who would stand here, centuries later, breathing the air they were finished with.

Lilith, who lived for one hundred years.  Edward, who lived for three days.  All brought something to this world.  All impacted someone’s life.

Now, the quiet of the land surrounding their resting place is the story of how today became and is what we call “history.”

Joy was the only sky I knew,

Family and friends, a simple map.

I walked a world of golden light,

Unaware of the coming trap.

A split second, a screech of steel,

The child becomes a man of stone.

The carefree boy is cast away,

To walk the gravel path alone.

The crowded tables thin and fade,

A stranger in a different frame.

With heavy shape and clouded eye,

I am not invited to the game.

I offer kindness, open-handed,

Yet fear the sting of being known.

A lifetime built on solitude,

I harvest seeds that I have sown.

The hunger for a friend remains,

But guarded by the ghosts of play;

The little boy inside the wall Still keeps the world an arm’s length away.