Erosion

I craft moments from the trembling edges of thought, weaving delicate wonders with fingers that have taught the the texture of the unspoken.

An offering rises like morning mist, meaning suspended in the space between us. I hold these fragile things out to you, palms upturned, bared to your rejection.

But your eyes slide past, refusing to settle on what I've made. They trace the outline of my form and find nothing worth keeping.

I have whispered almost-prayer into the shell of your ear, words distilled from silence and possibility. I've placed each one carefully, small polished stones along a shoreline.

But the tide of your indifference washes them away, leaving no impression in the sand.

Something hardens within me.

A slow, certain forming where tenderness once lived. This anger solidifies, growing denser with each moment of rejection until it becomes a weight that anchors me to depths you'll never see. How strange that fury can feel so cold, so heavy. It pulls against attempt at connection, dragging down the hands that once reached upward.

Love's efforts erode in unrelenting weight. Each attempt worn smoother than the last until nothing remains but rounded edges where intentions sword once hung.

The anguish lies in your refusal, and the casual nature of it. You turn away without recognition of what dies. You cannot mourn what you refuse to acknowledge, and so I carry this grief alone, the solitary witness to beauty's quiet extinction.

The sweetness I crafted sours on my tongue. I taste the curdled offering turning accusation, from invitation to indictment. How quickly wonder sours when met with closed doors. How readily light dims when there are no eyes willing to receive it.

I stand before you, hands still outstretched but now empty. Nothing left to give that hasn't already been declined.

Love grows stale. Do not fault neglect, but rejection turned resistance.

What remains is a hollowed space, an absence shaped like the connection we might have shared.

I trace its contours and find it perfect in its emptiness.

The hollow of all that could have bloomed between us, had you only been willing to see.