The Quiet That Found Me

A room…

Where I entered as one might enter a cave,

not to escape,

 but to quietly echo my presence.

Walls…

Did not speak,

but they listened like aged trees do,

their silence thick with memory.

A chair…

Its shadow curled like a sleeping cat,

waited without agenda.

 I sat,

and the world folded inward like a paper crane mid-flight,

teaching me that solitude is not absence,

but a lantern lit from within,

 casting shadows that dance like forgotten friends on the walls of the mind.

Estrangement…

Tugged gently at my sleeve,

not as a thief,

 but as a guide leading me into the wilderness

where choices bloom like wildflowers unafraid of not being seen.

There, a fox blinked at me

with eyes like burnt amber,

 and I suddenly understood the language of stillness.

A wilted daisy leaned into my palm as if asking not for rescue,

 but for recognition.

Even the wind seemed to pause,

its breath a hymn to the magnificence of things that do not clamor.

Yes…

In that dark room,

 I met myself as one meets a stranger who somehow knows your childhood nickname.

And I stayed,

 not out of loneliness,

 but because the quiet had teeth,

 that bit gently into the noise I once mistook for belonging.