Under the ribs of a nameless sky
Something moved where the dark won’t die
A silver hush in a buried room
A holy flower above a tomb
I felt your breath in the hidden wire
A tongue of rain and a crown of fire
Before I knew what my blood was for
You were there in the invisible core

Storm on the water, storm in the bone
I heard your voice like it was my own
A black sun turning behind my eyes
A wing of dust in a field of light
The beetle droned through the broken air
As if it carried a secret prayer
I stood so still, but the whole world swore
You were there in the invisible core

Rise in me now
Beautiful danger, unspeaking flame
Call me somehow
Out of the ruin and into your name
Close as a wound
Bright as the edge of a world unborn
I was asleep
You were the pulse in the heart of the storm

I saw your shape in the shattered glass
In every shadow that let me pass
Coiled in gold where the silence starts
Soft as a blade around my heart
I could not tell if you came to save
Or gather me down through the velvet grave
But every door that I wandered for
Led me back to the invisible core

No priest, no crown, no map, no sign
Only the spark and the seam divine
Only the ache that became a star
Only the hand inside the scar
If this is terror, let it bloom
If this is love, let it fill the room
I hear you now through the iron roar—
You were the first at the invisible core

Rise in me now
Beautiful danger, unspeaking flame
Call me somehow
Out of the ruin and into your name
Close as a wound
Bright as the edge of a world unborn
I was asleep
You were the pulse in the heart of the storm

Rise in me now
Hidden and holy, unfurling sign
Break through me now
Split all the dark till your light meets mine
Nearer than breath
Deep in the place I could not restore
I was the shell
You were the light in the invisible core

There is a light I could not see
Until it opened inside of me

You said the diamond breaks in two
Then two become a thousand views
Every window wants the sun
Every tongue says it’s the only one
Blue like memory, red like flame
Gold like the wound that changed my name
I chased the shade, I praised the sign
Till your white fire ran behind my mind

Everybody wants forever
In a shape that they can hold
Everybody names the feather
Like their heart is theirs to own

One light, many colors
One flame through another
One heart under all the names we borrow
One night, many stars
One wound, many scars
Still the same bright river running through the dark
We divide it, we discover—
One light, many colors

You were emerald in the rain
You were violet in the pain
Silver when the silence came
Black when I could not take your flame
Every road wore different dust
Every face declared its trust
But I could feel beneath them all
The single note behind the call

Everybody draws a border
Round the thing they think is true
But the edge becomes an altar
When the light comes breaking through

One light, many colors
One flame through another
One heart under all the names we borrow
One night, many stars
One wound, many scars
Still the same bright river running through the dark
We divide it, we discover—
One light, many colors

Don’t tell me which mirror to believe in
Don’t tell me where the sky should end
I’ve seen your face in splintered pieces
Still it was your face again
Every fracture throws a halo
Every shadow proves the sun
We were arguing with the prism
While the radiance stayed one

One light, many colors
One flame through another
One heart under all the names we borrow
One night, many stars
One wound, many scars
Still the same bright river running through the dark
We divide it, we discover—
One light, many colors

One light, many colors
One love through all the others
One voice hidden in the words of strangers
One sight, many eyes
One truth in disguise
Burning like a secret no one can deny
When it finds us, it recovers—
One light, many colors

They turned your name into a warning sign
Spat it like smoke on the burning line
Called you the stain, the beautiful wrong
But I knew better all along

I saw the dark in your velvet eyes
Not like a fall, but a truer sky
And every wound they laid on you
Only made the hidden gold come through

So let them speak in the market noise
Let them love what the morning destroys
I will come when the loud world drowns
I will bring you your night watch crown

In the hush after midnight
When the last door closes down
I will find you, I will know you
By the fire you never show them

No anthem, no spotlight
No trumpet, no public sound
Just my hands, just your shadow
And a kiss like a night watch crown

They praised the polished and blessed the skin
But I loved the ache beneath your sin
The grace that moved like a secret blade
The holy flaw that the daylight hates

No need for banners, no need for proof
The stars lean lower above the roof
And in the dark where the true things breathe
You were already crowned to me

Let them kneel where the bright flags fly
I have learned what survives the eye
Every silence that wraps us round
Is another stone in the unseen crown

In the hush after midnight
When the last door closes down
I will find you, I will know you
By the fire you never show them

No anthem, no spotlight
No trumpet, no public sound
Just my hands, just your shadow
And a kiss like a night watch crown

Someone will leave a violet in your hair
Someone will breathe your name into the air
Someone will dare what the day denies
And vanish before the sun can rise

Not for the world, not to be seen
But for the thing we have always been
A secret sworn without a sound
A kingdom built where the lost are crowned

In the hush after midnight
When the last door closes down
I will find you, I will know you
By the fire you never show them

No anthem, no spotlight
No trumpet, no public sound
Just my hands, just your shadow
And a kiss like a night watch crown

In the hush after midnight
When the whole world falls unwound
I will take you, I will praise you
Where no cruel eye can erase you

No judgment, no daylight
Can touch what we have found
You were mine in the silence
And I wear your night watch crown

You took the sorrow from the mouths of men
The hollow laugh, the wound beneath the skin
You held them up like fragments in the sun
And made a shining vessel out of everyone

A petal fell, and kingdoms called it doom
A tear became a lantern in the gloom
You only smiled and touched the tide with fire
And said, Come down—there’s more than your desire

Carry me, river of immortality
Farther than fear ever could
Carry me, river of ecstasy
Bright with the stain and the sin of our blood
I was on the shoreline
Waiting for the beautiful current to begin
Now I am all in
Take me alive to fall into your shimmering skin

There on the flood, a little vessel swayed
Steel in its bones and royal-purple shade
And in it lay a woman wrought of light
Still as a prayer asleep inside the night

I gave the flower of every younger dream
And threw myself into the scarlet stream
No map, no mercy, no returning star
Only the pulse of where your wonders are

For days and nights, I learned your silent face
The dangerous sweetness of your vacant grace
I kissed the gold until it darkened through
As though my longing left its stain on you

Then all at once your stillness turned to flame
Milk-white and living, breathing out my name
And what was blood became a living wine
The little boat, the flesh; the wind, divine

Carry me, river of immortality
Farther than fear ever could
Carry me, river of ecstasy
Bright with the stain and the sin of our blood
I was on the shoreline
Waiting for the beautiful current to begin
Now I am all in
Take me alive to fall into your shimmering skin

If I am drowned, let it be in wonder
If I am lost, let it be in light
Every wave breaks me open wider
Every star leans down tonight

I hear the banks of the old world fading
I feel your hands in the rising spray
What I called distance is only the glitter
Of the place where I’m giving way

Carry me, river of immortality
Farther than fear ever could
Carry me, river of ecstasy
Bright with the stain and the sin of our blood
I was on the shoreline
Waiting for the beautiful current to begin
Now I am all in
Take me alive to fall into your shimmering skin

Carry me, river of immortality
Beyond every name I have known
Carry me, river of ecstasy
Make of my longing a brightness your own
Out of the wound tide
Out of the beautiful danger within
I hear you calling—
Take me, and turn me to motion again

No harbor now, no end to deliver
Only the sky in the face of the river

White wings on the blue, you opened like a sign
No sound, no warning, only the lift of time
I laid my questions down against your side
And felt the whole horizon turn inside

The world below was glitter, then was gone
A thousand roads unthreading into dawn
I would have named the place, but names took flight
And vanished at the pleasure of your sight

Aimless wings
Carry me where the wanting sends
Aimless wings
Higher than the thought that ends
No far shore, no finish line
Only this holy drift in the divine
I was a blade of will
Now I am air, and still—
Aimless wings

A boy of noise was riding in my chest
Asking the old hard questions with no rest
Where do we go, and what is waiting there?
Why all this motion through the open air?

I almost answered from the life I knew
But laughter rose instead of something true
Because your silence was a brighter thing
Than all the maps I ever tried to sing

No whence
No where
No end I have to wear

You flew, you floated, dove without descent
A living curve of rapture and intent
Yet nowhere was the secret of your grace
It was the joy that shone from being in place

Between your wings, I came undone from need
From every finish line, I used to feed
And in the endless center of the sky
I learned how deep a heart can be when it stops the lie

Aimless wings
Carry me where the wanting sends
Aimless wings
Higher than the thought that ends
No far shore, no finish line
Only this holy drift in the divine
I was a blade of will
Now I am air, and still—
Aimless wings

All my life I chased the ever-after
Ran to the edge of every door
Now the lightness breaks me open faster
Than any triumph did before

If there’s a crown, it disappears above me
If there’s a road, it melts into you
And all I am is what your stillness made me
When I stopped trying to get through

Aimless wings
Bear me through the beautiful unknown
Aimless wings
Teach me how to vanish into tone
No arrival, no release
Only this endless flowering of peace
I was a fist of fire
Now I am pure desire
On aimless wings

When the white fades out of heaven
Will I remember how to sing?
Or only hear a shadow moving
Through the silence of a string?

I lay where the afternoon gathered its gold
On stone made warm by a comforting sun
My hands had fallen away from the strings
As if every song I had carried was done
The garden was bright, but I couldn’t stay there
The day touched my face like a beautiful lie
And all I could hear was the weight of the air
And the sound of a life going silent inside

They’ll say what they want when a man goes still
They’ll call it shame, or love, or defeat
They’ll laugh at the ache that won’t answer back
They’ll circle the wound just to make it complete
I heard them already, those faraway mouths
Turning my name into something to spend
But none of them knew what was moving above me
None of them knew who had come as a friend

Your shadow moved across the strings
And the silence opened wide
Dark like a mercy, slow and certain
You were there on the other side
I thought the day had closed around me
Thought every door was burned
But you were waiting inside the stillness
For my whole heart to turn

I would not have asked if your name was death
Or love, or ruin, or some nameless grace
You came like the answer that empties the question
And left all my fear with no place to stay
The sunlight was still on the marble around me
The world had not changed by a single degree
But under your darkness the strings started waking
And something forgotten remembered me

Let them say I was broken
Let them say I was blind
Let them make of my longing
Whatever eases their minds
They never touched the beginning
They never stood where you stood
Close as the grief in my breathing
Deep as the first hidden good

Your shadow moved across the strings
And the silence opened wide
Dark like a mercy, slow and certain
You were there on the other side
I thought the day had closed around me
Thought every door was burned
But you were waiting inside the stillness
For my whole heart to turn

So if I lie down in the daylight again
If the song leaves my hands, if the sweetness goes mute
I will remember the hush that found me
The shadow that fell through the room
Yes, I will rise when the night calls me upward
I will go where the nameless have gone
Because you were with me before I could feel you
And you were the dark before dawn

I wore the old desire like a second skin
A borrowed fire that I kept living in
Every mirror gave me someone to become
Every hunger beat its little kingdom drum

Perfume and memory, venom and lace
Ghost after ghost with your shadowed face
I called it love when it only curled
Round the locked gate of a smaller world

I fed on fragments, on heat, on signs
On bruised-up kisses and broken designs
I drank from the wells that never stayed clear
I knelt to the shape of my favorite fear

And all that glittered began to rot
All that possessed me possessed me not
Till something deeper than want or pain
Began to rise through my blood like rain

Open the sky inside of me
Break what I was to set me free
Beyond the wound
Beyond the will
Beyond the names I answer still

Take this heart past the edges of form
Hold me whole in the center of the storm

I climbed through memory, bone by bone
Through every inheritance called my own
The father-voice, the inward chain
The ancient pattern beneath the name

I turned to face what I could not keep
The root that twisted below the deep
And there you were—not dream, not sign—
But the living vast with its coils in mine

Not the sweeter lie
Not the lesser flame
Not the wound I learned
To worship by name

You were the field
You were the sea
You were the silence
Unfastening me

Open the sky inside of me
Break what I was to set me free
Beyond the wound
Beyond the will
Beyond the names I answer still

Take this heart past the edges of form
Hold me whole in the center of the storm

Crown of the dark that births the dawn
Take all I am and carry it on
No more the shard
No more the role
No more the hunger that called me whole

I am the cry and the answering flame
I am the wound and the nameless name
Come through me now

And after the breaking, a deeper desire
Not less of the body
But more of the fire

I came by thirst and a fevered tongue
Through gardens dim where the red fruit hung
The air was sweet with a dangerous sleep
And the roots of longing ran dark and deep

I had no prayer I could safely use
Only the fear of one confused
To cross the gate where the perfumes burned
And trust the wound for which I had yearned

They touched my mouth with a narcotic flame
They dressed my silence and undid my name
With hands like night and with eyes like wine
They drew me out to the inward shrine

Nature in red, perfection in black
Moved like two sisters behind my back
They made me bright for the fatal room
Like a living flower prepared to bloom

In the house of the Beloved
Every heart turns into fire

In the house of the Beloved
Every fear becomes desire

Touch me through the dread
Strip me to the light

If your kiss is death
Let it come tonight

Then all their laughter and hands were gone
And I was left with the pulse alone
No song to carry me safely through
No space between me and wanting you

I felt your coming before your face
Like a blade made hot by a hidden grace
And all I was, with its practiced art
Began to fail in the chambers of my heart

What have I asked for
If not this living end?

What have I worshipped
If not the wound you send?

Come like a terror
Come like a lover untrue
Come like the answer
That leaves no space but you

In the house of the Beloved
I am holy in my pride

In the house of the Beloved
I am opened by the light

Take me past the rose
Past the dream of bliss

If your love destroys
Let me die in this

And on the threshold of your splendor
Even my rapture learned to wither

On the threshold stood the ruin in a living shape
Eyes like poisoned wells and a face carved out by age
It wrapped me slow in its tidal limbs
Till the room smelled black and the light grew thin
Every fear I had buried learned my skin
Every old corruption called me back within
And the air itself became a waiting grave
For the part of me that no longer wanted to be saved

One for the flesh
One for the void
One for the word I could not avoid

One for the blood
One for the sea
One for the mask that answered as me

One for the root
One for the flame
Eight dark doors and they all knew my name

Then I slipped from the clutch of dread
Like water loosed from a stone-sealed bed
Not by innocence, not by strength alone
But by something deeper my fear had never known
And the horror broke beneath your nearing light
As the false abyss opened vast and wide
Across that stillness your splendor moved
Before I could see you, I was pierced clean through

The eight fears came to take me under
But your coming burned through every one
Storm in my bones, spear made of thunder
Night split open by a deathless sun
What could not love you fell in pieces
What could not stand you was undone
The eight fears rose like iron kingdoms
And your silence shattered every one

There was bliss with a darkness at the root of birth
There was flower and shadow married in the earth
There was bright perfection with a slow black heart
There was no clean line to take things apart
Brightness cleaving to brightness, mire answering mire—
So the proud world speaks through its little wars
But you were whole where all division dies
And I drank that terror with unshielded eyes

One for the storm
One for the spear
One for the promise hidden in fear

One for the sleep
One for the cry
One for the wave with no foam in the sky

One for the child
One for the grave
Eight dark doors and I refused to cave

I was weary to the marrow
Body dim and spirit worn
But beneath the weight of ending
Lived the certainty of dawn
Then the desolate voice within me
Poured a wine I did not know
And it ran through all my fractures
Till even weakness learned to glow

The eight fears came to name and bind me
Crown me with the limits of the known
But your coming moved beneath and through me
Till there was nothing left but tone
Now the storm is in my breathing
Now the spear is in my blood
Now the void has turned to passage
And the sea has turned to love

The eight fears rose like ancient towers
And fell like ash before your flood

I heard the echo before the kiss
A spark made fierce by the emptiness
You drew a line through the heart of night
And taught my darkness to carry light

No altar stood and no crowd could see
The secret fire remaking me
Yet through the hollow, through all that failed
A single living center held

You pierced me deep with the fourfold sign
Thunder and serpent and flesh and spine
Not to destroy what I could not save
But to stand me up through the inward grave

You gathered the shards of the names I wore
Melted them down to a hidden core
Till all the scattered gold in me
Became one point of identity

Pillar in the void
Rise where nothing else remains

Pillar in the void
Name me past my borrowed names

Heart within the dark
Flame no wind can overthrow

What was sought in fragments
Now stands single in the glow

Pillar in the void
I am known

I am not lost in your vastness now
I am the seal of the given vow
The wound is closed and burning bright
A star set deep in the field of night

No praise can swell it, no scorn can shake
No lesser hunger can make it break
You coil within me, still and sure
And what you build in me will endure

Let the high walls tremble
Let the old forms fall
I have heard the hidden music
Moving under all
Not above the world
But secret at its seam
The axis of the silence
The structure of the dream

Pillar in the void
Rise where nothing else remains

Pillar in the void
Name me past my borrowed names

Heart within the dark
Flame no wind can overthrow

What was sought in fragments
Now stands single in the glow

Pillar in the void
I am known

Pillar in the void
Crowned within the formless height

Pillar in the void
Built of hunger, wound, and light

I and the Beloved
No longer split by thirst or role

What was only calling
Now is written through my soul

Pillar in the void
Made whole

And from the stillness of that frame
A living fire returned with my name

I came back marked by a hidden wine
A blaze no daylight could define
Through ruined streets and a faithless square
I carried the hush of your answering there

Some turned away from the scent of it
Said it was fever, a wound, a trick
Some felt it move like a second breath
And followed the spark through the taste of death

I had no law for the mouths that asked
No polished creed for the eyes that passed
Only a fire in a mortal frame
And your dark sweetness beneath my name

The proud came near with their measured doubt
The broken came with their thirst turned out
One drop was poison to those who feared
One drop was dawn to the ones who heard

Seal my heart
With the sign no hand can show

Seal my heart
With the fire that burns below

Let it shine through blood and bone
Let it move though still unknown
Not for the crowd, not to explain—
But to live, and live again

Seal my heart

I saw them gather in ash and gold
The fierce, the tender, the faithless, the bold
Some laughed like kings at the edge of night
Some wept as if they had swallowed light

And all around them the old world shook
Not by a sword, not by a book
But by the pulse of a deeper art
A glowing ring around the heart

Do not ask me for the language
It was never mine to keep
Do not ask me for the meaning
Buried where the roots run deep

Take the cup or turn away now
Taste the dark or leave it sealed
What is chosen will awaken
What is false will never yield

Seal my heart
With the love that wounds and crowns

Seal my heart
With the force that circles round

Golden coil and living flame
Call me past my little name
I was dust and I was thirst
Now I bear the hidden burst

Seal my heart
On every side
Seal my heart
And let it ride

No final answer
No curtain call
Only the glow
Surrounding all
A heart made radiant
A serpent drawn
A kiss in darkness
A second dawn

And if they read these signs like ruins
Let them
If they seal them in their blood
They’ll know