Scatter

I may burst.

From the too-much of it all. From the weight of something vast and wordless pressing against my skin, pushing at the edges of thought. Sleep has shaken the gates loose again, and now it pours in.

The whispers, the echoes, the fragments of things too large to hold but too urgent to ignore.

Paper. Find it. Hurry.

The air crackles, thick, alive. Words swirl in the haze, pressing in from all sides, beating at the windows of my mind.

They want in.

Or out?

Both. Neither. They are a river, a flood, a beat that won’t let me go. I reach for them, hands outstretched.

But the moment I try, they scatter.

I struggle with this fullness. I feel it, I know it, but the second I turn to face it, it disappears. If I hold too tightly, it slips through my fingers. It flits away into a darkened corner, seen only in the periphery, never head-on.

Don’t stare. It will vanish.

Shhh.

Let it come.

I breathe. I wait. The morning hums with something unseen, something pressing against my chest, curling at the edges of my breath. My fingers twitch.

Tap, tap, tap…

and the words come.

Not summoned, not shaped. Just... there. Bleeding into the world, forming themselves. But whose words are these? Mine? Yours? Some echo reverberating from a place beyond?

It was never there. And now it is. It always has been.

I feel the tears now, rising like mist, catching light before they fall. But are they mine? Yours? Someone else’s grief, someone else’s longing, someone else’s knowing? A heartbeat slams through my chest

hard, urgent, not mine. Or is it?

Are you frightened? Are we ?

I am speaking to you, but you are not here. You are there , but also everywhere . A presence at the edges of thought, a breath against my skin, a ripple through the silence.

Hello.

Nice to see you again.

Sit with me. Let’s talk.

Don’t speak.

Words will only break it. They are too small, too sharp, too slow to carry the weight of this. But the silence.

Oh, the silence can hold it. It can stretch, expand, contain the everything of it all.

And so we sit, saying everything without saying a thing.

And for one breathless, endless moment

The universe listens.