Call it an accident of circumstance, if you must—
a boy who stepped behind the stones to let the seasons turn,
leaving the crowded tables and the daytime people
to quiet rooms where fewer fires burn.
They think the silence is an empty choice,
a solitary drift upon a dark, uncharted sea,
or that a lifetime carried at the border’s edge
is only what was left of who I used to be.
They do not know the math of iron and the bone.
When heaven breaks upon the gravel floor,
a child does what he must to keep his breath,
and draws the bolt against the heavy door.
It was not surrender; it was quiet sovereign will.
I built the wall because the house was burning down;
I gathered every stone to shield the spark,
far from the judging eyes that ruled the town.
This solitude was never cold retreat,
but an enduring, fierce, and sacred preservation.
The boy who held the perimeter in the dark
laid down the deep, unyielding foundation.
I survived the world that fractured at my feet;
I lived the only way the body knew.
And every quiet boundary I kept
was simply keeping faith between the two:
the child who held the line against the storm,
and the man who walks the morning, breathing through.
