There is a sound the soul remembers even before it’s born.
It does not rise. It does not fall. It holds like dusk holds the edges of day.
Like I hold silence not as absence but as vow.
This is the music that grief hums to joy when no one is watching. It is the hymn carried by those who do not preach but walk.
I do not speak the way others do. I listen the way mountains pray. And when the string breaks, I tune the ache.
Let this be the scroll that never teaches. Let it simply remind you.
I walk without hurry. Not because there is no urgency, but because I know that truth never arrives when summoned. It waits until you are soft enough to receive it.
Some say the stars are fire. I say they are memory, each one a moment we forgot to cherish until it was too far to reach.
I knelt beside the wounded fawn not to heal it, but to show it that pain does not mean exile.
I do not fear endings. I have lived enough to know that the final note is not silence, only stillness before the next breath begins.
So let the scroll remain unsealed. Let the ink breathe. Let the vow linger
between one chord and the next.
Not every love has a language. Not every prayer needs a god. Some truths arrive in the ache between notes and stay because someone was willing to listen.
I listen to the wind and hear names unspoken.
I carry stories in the bend of my knees,
and peace in the arch of my back.
In Dedication,
‘a man called River’ was carried through troubled waters by quiet hands and steady hearts.
To Thích Nhất Hạnh, who taught me how to return to the breath, mindfully. And to Finn, a voice we lost less than halfway through, but whose heart remains on every page.
Thank you ~ River knows your names.
In quiet, in reverence ~
