You’ve finished reading.
But not everything ends when you close a page.

Some words stay —
 not as memory,
  but as tuning.

And maybe now,
 when you walk,
  you’ll hear something
   between footsteps.

Maybe now,
 you’ll listen
 not for meaning —
 but for presence.

And maybe the sound
 that never quite arrived
  is the one
   that stays.

(can art occur without an artist?)

Maybe the question is wrong.

Maybe art doesn’t begin
 with the artist.
Maybe it begins
 with a condition.
A field.
A stillness.

Something opens —
  and something enters.
Not summoned.
Not owned.
Just… appearing.

A melody you hum without knowing why.
A shape your hand draws while thinking of nothing.
A line that arrives mid-walk
 with no sender,
 but undeniable weight.

Did you make it?
Or did you just
 stop being in the way?

Art, sometimes, is what happens
 in the absence
 of authorship.

It doesn’t ask for identity.
It just needs
 an opening.

A body willing
 to vanish
  long enough
  to let it speak.

a candle
 burning in daylight —
 still giving off heat,
  but no longer needed
  to be seen.

a river
 forgetting its name
 as it enters the sea.
not lost —
  just larger.

a breath
 held so long
 it forgets who exhaled.

the silence
 inside a cathedral
 after the choir has left —
 still echoing
 with something sacred,
 but unclaimed.

a shadow
 that keeps dancing
 even after the dancer
 has left the room.

You don’t have to erase the self.
It erodes on its own
  in the presence
    of real seeing.

It came like weather.
No origin.
No request.

Just a shift in pressure
    inside the skin.
And something
  started speaking
    through my hands.

It wasn’t mine.
Not the phrase.
Not the image.
Not the ache it left.

But it needed a body
  to pass through.
And mine
  was open
    enough.

There are moments
when I read back what I wrote
  and feel
    like a stranger
    with my own voice.

Not confused.
Not proud.
Just…
  borrowed.

I don’t always know
 what I’m doing.
But sometimes,
 not knowing
  is what lets it happen.

Call it muse.
Call it current.
Call it memory
      from before this life.

I don’t need to name it.
Just not get in the way.

I don’t remember what you said.
Not exactly.
Maybe not at all.

But I remember
how your voice
  lowered
  when you said it.

How it curled slightly
  at the edge,
 like a question
 that wasn’t safe to ask
 out loud.

Some conversations
leave no quotes.
No lines to repeat.

Just a hum.
A pressure.
The sense that something
 shifted.
Without needing a name.

I’ve forgotten stories.
Entire rooms of meaning.
But I haven’t forgotten
 the way you sounded
  when you almost broke.

Or when you didn’t.

Tone is the body of language.
It carries what words can’t.

And maybe
what we really remember
 is not what we heard —
 but what we felt
 when we were listening.

It didn’t happen.
But it could have.

And that “could”
  still glows
    in the dark of me.

We never kissed.
But there was a second
 when your breath
 found mine —
  not touching,
  just measuring the space
  where it might.

That second
  lasted longer
  than entire nights.

We didn’t say it.
But the air between us
  knew.
Not the meaning,
  but the weight.

And maybe
that’s the truest kind of intimacy —
the one that doesn’t insist,
  just lingers.

What didn’t unfold
  still forms me.
Not as memory,
but as shape.

A bend in how I move.
A shadow I do not fear.
A pause
  I’ve learned to live inside.