I have walked where the trees speak in long shadows and the rivers remember names older than mine.

My feet have learned the language of dust, my hands the patience of stone.

I have slept beneath the wide, unblinking sky and woken with frost in my beard and fire in my chest.

Now I build a small fire. Not to conquer the dark—but to speak into it.

Smoke rises. Slow. Certain. It does not rush the heavens. It becomes them.

Great Spirit, You who move in the wind through pine needles, You who rest in the deep belly of the earth, You who listen in the silence between heartbeats—hear me.

I do not ask to be made whole. You have already shaped me in your image of breath and bone. I stand as I am—a man carved by distance, tempered by solitude, awake.

But I have carried a warmth with no place to go. Let the earth remember me now. Let the ground beneath my feet stir and answer.

From the red clay, from the riverbend, from the fields of tall grass—bring forth a woman of quiet strength and living light. Not as shelter. Not as remedy. But as horizon.

Let her walk beside me as the sun walks beside the mountains—never owned, never bound, yet always returning.

Let her laughter be like water over stone, smoothing what is hard without breaking it. Let her eyes carry the dusk, deep enough to rest in, bright enough to rise from.

And let me meet her not as a seeker, but as a flame—steady, open, unafraid to give heat. So that together, we may turn toward this wide and breathing world and offer it something it has long waited for—a love that does not take, a warmth that does not consume, a quiet fire that smiles back at creation.

The smoke lifts. It thins. It disappears. But you have already heard me.