There was no announcement when she left—
only the trace, a softened intention.
Shadows that once stood upright
now lying in fragments.

My family left me stories,
facts mingled with flourishes, pressed into my chest.
Only the traces remain now—
a softened skeleton of intention.
Quiet as a final syllable,
unstated… but understood.

In the hush of wild grass,
memory leans into shadow…

I am a carrier of voices,
even silent ones.
I don’t speak for my ancestors—
I speak near them.
I listen beneath them.
Their patterns rise
where they want to be known.

Where they want to be known.

Mother assigned us our parts,
characters in stories she never finished.
We edited them in silence at night—
breaths I carried forward,
voices I couldn’t name
until now.
One refrain came like breath on glass.
I almost dismissed it—
but some names appear only
when we stop naming them.

She left impressions—not in the pages she kept,
but in the ones she tore out.
Truth rewritten,
consequences hushed.

I am a carrier of voices,
even silent ones.
Not echo… but evidence.
Where they want to be known.

I wait for her—
not for answers,
but for the echo I’ve always known.
A stream of reckoning
blooming into gestures of my hand-drawn past—
solitary watercolors,
tools of witness.
Mirroring me.
Multiplying me.
Whispering a million variations
of something I once loved.
The thrill and the terror are the same.