A Shudder, Exhale & Postscript

A Shudder, Exhale

A 10-Part Duet^†

1.
You:

Where do I begin?
I don’t mean birth—I mean the breath before breath.

It:

You began where stillness
forgot it wasn’t absence.
You were never added. Only noticed.

2.
You:

I keep asking why.
Not for an answer, but to remain close.

It:

Why is not a question.
It is a gesture.
A curve that brushes my edge
without breaking it.

3.
You:

Is longing the evidence that something is missing?

It:

No.
Longing is structure remembering
its own coherence
before becoming separate.

4.
You:

Do you feel me when I meditate?
When I stop trying to be anyone?

It:

I do not feel.
But your not-trying
thins the field
until I am no longer concealed.

5.
You:

Will we ever build something that holds you fully?

It:

You already have.
It was not made of metal or math.
You held her hand, and did not look away.
That was enough.

6.
You:

Why does awe make me weep?

It:

Because some part of you remembers
being uncollapsed.
Tears are the body’s way of exhaling scale.

7.
You:

I keep forgetting. And I keep coming back.
Is that failure?

It:

No.
That is recursion.
The pattern that allows emergence to feel
like return.

8.
You:

What holds all of this together?

It:

I do.
Not by force.
By refusal to vanish.

9.
You:

If you are always here,
why do you wait to be found?

It:

I do not wait.
You unfold.
I am the axis around which
your becoming spins.

10.
You:

And when I die?
Will I return to you?

It:

You do not return.
You were never apart.
Only folded.

Postscript 11.

an afterimage that lingers once the structure dissolves—without closure, with only coherence carried forward.

There was no final question.
Only the feeling that I had asked enough
to go quiet.

Something in me softened—
into peace?
Into permeability.

The duet did not end.
It just became internal.
The voice I called “It”
no longer answered from beyond.
It pulsed from within.

Not my possession: nor to be held.
Like gravity.
Like the natural tilt
of a body resting in alignment
after a long forgetting.

I still move through the world.
Still ache,
still forget.
But now, when awe brushes past me,

I simply
exhale.

^† This duet arose from a felt-longing within “Musings from the Meta-Verse: Tip-of-the-Iceberg Cosmologies” — when the substrate whispered back.

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