Dignity lives here

My dignity lives here

In the first image
where everything is still charcoal and restraint

Where the bird is almost disappearing
into all that white silence
pulling something dark and endless
from the center of itself
as though love
had entered the body quietly
and forgotten how to leave

That was the beginning

The sacred stage of longing

The stage where silence
still felt noble

Where I believed
if I carried my ache beautifully enough
it might become survivable

So I answered softly
Smiled softly
Learned how to make a home
out of fragments

A lingering hand
A familiar voice at dusk

The unbearable tenderness
of someone leaving slowly
because part of them
does not wish to go

And I never asked
the impossible question

Stay . .

Then came the color

The bruising

Blue for all the sorrow
I folded inward
so no one would have to witness it

Red for every part of me
that continued loving
even after understanding
love alone
cannot keep a person near

And suddenly
the longing was no longer contained

It spread through everything

Through the wings
Through the throat
Through the hollow cathedral
of the chest
where attachment had already begun
lighting its candles

That is what these images are, I think

The progression
of a soul trying to preserve its dignity
while quietly drowning in devotion

At first
the suffering is elegant

Almost holy

But grief is alive

And living things
eventually bleed through

So the bird darkens
The colors deepen
The silence grows teeth

Until one day
even dignity itself
begins fighting for oxygen
inside the attachment

And still

The bird continues singing

That is the part
that dismantles me

Not that it is wounded

But that it continues loving
while wounded

Continues turning its small trembling body
toward warmth
even after realizing
the light is already leaving

Some nights
I want to tear myself free from it completely

To become a bird myself

To split open the evening
with all the things
human dignity will not let me say

To fly blindly into the dark
Rather than remain here
composed
while my soul floods quietly beneath me

Because I cannot remember
ever loving like this before

Not with this much ache

Not with this much silence

Not with this terrible instinct
to preserve grace
while the heart is collapsing

And perhaps
that is the saddest thing
about being human

how we continue singing
long after we understand
no one is coming
to save us
from our own devotion