at six they sorted the buttons by the number of holes and the thread that held them
and explained it to the other children, who nodded, then ran
the nodding was the kindest part, it asked for nothing more
the tag in their collar screamed, the lights hummed a note no one else heard
so they learned the trick early
say less, say nothing, and the room lets you stay
at nine they knew why one word is spelled two ways in two old books
and which scribe grew tired first
they held it out like a gift to a classmate at recess
the classmate said cool, and went to find someone real
they carried the tired scribe home again, heavier
among the others like them, the ones with their own odd dialects
the loves ran on separate roads
one wanted the grammar of a dead language, one wanted the typefaces of old street signs
they wanted the third verse of a song nobody played, and why the key shifts there
three people at a table, each one speaking to the glass
they went home from those evenings emptier than from the crowds
then came the years of the borrowed face
a smile fitted at the door like a coat from a stranger
the laugh arriving half a second behind the joke
scripts rehearsed in the car, eye contact counted out like change
every friendship a hallway, they walked all of it, no door opened inward
once, at thirty, they spoke of a lyric, how one word turned the whole song over
the listener checked a phone, kindly
and the distance came back, polite, and sat down where it always sat
they drove home rehearsing how to be less next time
at forty a form arrived with a name on it for how their mind was made
it explained everything and changed nothing
forty years of the wrong questions, answered by one word on a page
they read it twice, and folded it small, and told no one
music reached them as a hundred small decisions, the second guitar buried on the left
the producer’s tired choice at the end of a long night
a painting was a forger’s one wrong blue, a book was the ancestry of a metaphor, the weight of a comma
they wanted the forest whole, just green, just there
but their eyes went to the leaf, then the vein of the leaf, then the vein of the vein
they envied the ones who could sway to a song and call that everything
decades, the corner of the party, a cup going warm in their hand
laughter across the room in a language with no door
they watched joy the way some people watch a fire from behind a pane
on their birthday the phone lay face up all evening
a small black mirror that kept their face and nothing else
then the mornings grew heavier
the body began closing rooms, one by one
the appetite first, then the reasons, then the small machinery of will that lifts a person out of bed
the list of reasons to rise grew short, then shorter, then one name, their own
said aloud to an empty house, and the house had no answer
they had not reached sixty
the heart slowed to the pace of its company, which was no one
a week of envelopes leaned against the door
that is how the neighbor knew
eleven chairs were set out, four were filled
a stranger read their name from a card, and said it wrong
nobody stood to correct it
here lies the one who loved too finely for a coarse world to hold
who counted every leaf and was counted by no one
a whole library of wonder, shut with its one reader inside
every obscure and tender fact they carried is gone, a language with one speaker, finished
silence, who was always listening, learned them by heart
the room kept laughing, the room is laughing still
may the corner they stood in keep their shape a while
and may we who looked straight through them walk past it for years
and feel a draught we mistake for nothing
—lyra moon (a receipt for one brass screw marks the place in the last book)
november 3, 2026