On Emptiness

Receding

(For The Dead Inside)

0402.2025

You are receding—

falling into the horizon

like dusk devouring light.

I struggle saving you—

but even your shadow vanished.

When our thread tore,

it took the scent of spring—

the flowers had just begun

to color my smile

with the lie of joy.

Then came the light—

unforgiving,

unblinking—

dragging the dead

from my heart

into their graves,

and beneath time’s silence,

which keeps them

as captives.

They are like you:

a goodness,

a fragile fire,

burning out

and falling

into a lesson

inside a thousand

lessons.

I must be thankful somehow—

but the gratitude burns.

My eyes have turned to deserts.

The sun devours me.

The night drinks my life.

What goes unnamed

because you lied?

What am I to think,

now that I see—

the joke is me?

I will think:

Turn me into a bird,

so my wings break

from my hiding heart

and carry its sorrow

from night

into half-light.

At least.

I will think:

Turn me into dust,

so I forget

what I have learned

ten thousand times.

I will think:

Let spring

cover me.

Let summer

end this cold.

Let something bloom

in the ruin

of my garden.

m.c.f.

Photo, 2024, m.c.f.

Love Without Ego

I Still Do

(for no one, and you)

I love with a silence blooming in bones—

My love asks for nothing,

but still lights a lamp in the dark

in case you want to come home.

I love you like a prayer

when nobody is listening—

even when you vanish,

and the leaving is drowned in your absence.

I love you when your words turn to shadow,

or are lost on the air,

and your care stops calling my name.

You don’t have to earn it.

I never meant to give it.

It arrives like sun in the spring—

slow, warm, and impossible to refuse.

There are still pieces of you in my life—

the tone of your voice

curled around a word,

the way you linger

at the edge of your own heart.

You may never hold my heart in your hands again.

You may never say my name out loud.

I may never hear you.

But I hope,

when the noise grows quiet

and people around you forget to listen—

you remember how once,

you were deeply seen

and entirely loved

by a rose who asked for nothing.

I loved you.

Not to possess.

Not to be chosen.

But because some loves

arrive like stars—

brilliant, distant,

and mean to be carried,

not kept.

And I still do.

m.c.f.

Photo, 2024, m.c.f.

On Quiet Surrender

Night’s Mercy

0328.2025

The night’s splendor

pours through the window—

its silver secret sends me off

upon a sleepy sea of sorrow…

and I surrender gently,

like petals drifting,

learning to float

where I’d drown.

— m.c.f.