and she spins threads of moonlight between her fingertips —

a weaver of words who once stood barefoot in wheatfields,

naming each star after a lover she never kissed.

<the loom begins its quiet breathing: wind through dry grasses>

i remember how silence tasted that night —

like copper pennies and rain on rusted gates,

like her voice threading between stanzas:

"tell me," she whispered,

"what color is absence when the paintbrush forgets itself?"

so i dipped my hands in the inkwell of departed summers,

drew constellations on the backs of moth wings,

watched them dissolve into alphabets

too heavy to fly —

<a single blackbird stitches itself into the margin, tail feathers dripping punctuation>

and the poem grew roots beneath my tongue,

a tangled orchard of unpicked metaphors

where every apple held the echo

of a cypress tree learning its own name.

she taught me that grief is just gravity wearing language's coat,

that light bends differently

around the corners of words

we promise ourselves we'll remember

but swallow instead —

smooth stones skipping

across the lakebed of tomorrow's throat.

<look closer: the white spaces between these letters are humming>

here, in the hollow where the page meets the candle's last breath,

i press my ear to the spine of her absence

and hear the sea

that carries no ships —

only the sound of ink

finding its way home

to the wound

that first taught it

to sing.