someone underlined this passage
in faded pencil, years ago —
a stranger's hand trembling
at the same sentence
that now stops me cold.

we will never meet,
but we have read
the same truth
and been changed by it.

the chairs are still warm
with the ghosts of attention.
chalk dust settles
like snow on a battlefield
where ideas fought
and some survived.

on the board: a question
no one answered.
it hangs in the air,
patient as stone.

I write to you in a language
that hasn't been invented yet —
part Latin, part longing,
part the silence between
cathedral bells.

you will read this
and understand only half.
that is the half
that matters.

a cup going cold.
a book face-down, spine cracked
at the page where
the protagonist makes
the wrong choice.

rain. always rain.
the window a grey canvas
and I, the only viewer
in this gallery of one.

beneath every word I write
is a word I erased.
beneath that, another.

if you held this page to the light
you'd see layers of me —
draft after draft of a person
still learning
how to mean
what they say.