You find me not at the beginning but in the middle, as though the air had been waiting and I had been in it all along.

I do not come forward—no, I remain, still as glass laid over the sea, and the sea moves beneath me in ways you cannot see.

I let your eyes rest where mine have chosen, let your breath fit into the shape of mine, slow, unmeasured, without start or finish.

Words, if they come, are soft as linen pulled through the fingers, each one without edges, spilling into the next until there is no place to stop.

You stand there, and the floor grows light under your feet, and the distance between us turns to water, and the water to nothing at all.

I will not take you quickly.

No, I will keep you here, in this weightless pause where your name matters less than the sound your pulse makes when it learns my rhythm.

When you turn, you will feel the shore is gone.

When you breathe, you will know the air belongs to me.