IN QUIET PAUSES

 

In the Quiet PausesIn the random hushes of silence
that steal into any given day—
those sudden pockets where the clock forgets its ticking,
the traffic fades to a distant hum—
that's where you'll find me,
adrift in the velvet hush of recollection. Unpacking battered suitcases from a distant future
we once mapped under star-drunk skies,
leather cracked and handles worn from carrying too much.
Memories tumble out like faded photographs:
some to cradle gently, some to burn,
others to seal in dusty storage trunks
where moths and time can gnaw at them alone. An invisible something hovered between us—
a cold, translucent wall of frost on glass,
untouchable yet cutting,
shattering the "forever" we traced in breath-fogged windows
on winter nights that promised endless warmth. All I ever craved was you—
raw, unpolished, exactly as the dawn found you:
no pieces carved away, no glittering extras soldered on.
Just the salt of your skin, the thunder in your laugh,
the quiet storms behind your eyes. Yet the world flung its cheap jewels at us—
neon billboards flashing like counterfeit diamonds,
catching our gaze in hypnotic fire.
We chased those cold sparks across the night,
fingers slipping through smoke and mirror-light. I took your hand beneath a bruised and bleeding sky,
pulled you close until our heartbeats tangled.
"Look into my eyes," I whispered, voice trembling like candle flame.
In that raw, electric moment, I spilled my soul:
who I am in the marrow,
what I hunger for from your depths,
and the shadowed roads ahead—
the blooming gardens or the scorched-earth endings
if we dared to keep walking hand in hand. I never believed I carried the steel inside—
woman enough to wield the blade,
to slice the rope that moored us,
to watch you drift toward unlived apartments
with bare walls echoing what might have been. Now, in these stolen pauses,
I stand taller in the wreckage,
breathing air unthick with unsaid things,
roots sinking deeper into my own wild ground.