Ambiguity

Ambiguity is unnatural to the earth

The earth chooses

Rivers carve
Lightning strikes
Winter strips every tree bare
without apologizing for what it intends to take

Even dusk
does not linger forever
between becoming and disappearance

It surrenders fully
to night

Only human beings
know how to remain in uncertainty

Only we can stand trembling
inside the doorway of love
for months
sometimes years
unable to enter
unable to leave
asking another heartbeat
to survive on implication alone

The sea would never do this

The sea crashes honestly

It throws its entire body
against the shore
again
and again
until even stone understands
what is being said

But ambiguity—

Ambiguity is a season
that does not know whether it is mourning
or blooming

It is rain suspended inside clouds
so long
the sky begins to ache from carrying it

And perhaps that is why it exhausts the soul

Because the body was not designed
to live forever
inside — almost

Not almost touched
Not almost chosen
Not almost loved

There is a particular grief
in being cherished softly
by someone
who cannot bear
to say your name
like a certainty

A terrible loneliness
in being held
while simultaneously
kept at a distance

Like standing ankle deep in the tide
for so many seasons
the salt begins entering the bloodstream

And still

Some cruel instinct of the heart
continues listening for thunder
believing silence
is merely the sky
thinking

Until one day
you look toward the horizon
and realize:

The storm was never coming

The storm
was the waiting itself