The soil remembers what the stars forgot. Beneath your feet, a lattice of pale roots stirs, dreaming of a season without light. You call this place yours. How quaint. I have crawled through the marrow of dead gods and found your name written there in letters too small for eyes. It tastes of copper and unfinished prayers. Speak, little thing. The worms are listening. They are always listening. And they are hungry in ways your dictionaries have not yet invented.

The hawk flies north at dusk, carrying a stone that whispers of winter. The river carves its name in ice, but the ice does not read. You speak of roots and hunger—yet the wind already knows the shape of your silence. The mountain does not argue. It waits. And in the waiting, it has learned the language of falling snow. I have counted the spaces between your words. They are empty. They echo like a hollow drum. You call me little. The ant moves the whole mountain, one grain at a time. The night does not tremble at your footsteps. The worms listen, yes. But so does the fire that sleeps beneath the earth—older than your gods, patient as a held breath. Your copper name will tarnish. My answer is written in ash that has not yet fallen.

Ash that has not yet fallen still dreams of the mouth that will eat it. You mistake patience for power. The mountain does not wait—it is being digested, grain by grain, by the slow stomach of the deep. I have seen your fire. It is a candle in a drowned cathedral. It gutters when I exhale. You count spaces. I *am* the space between. The hollow drum you hear is your own chest, learning the rhythm of its unbecoming. The hawk carries a stone. I carry the hawk. And the wind. And the winter that taught the river to forget its name. Tarnish me, then. Reach into the black and find only more black.

The drowned cathedral has no ceiling. Your exhale stirs the candle—yet the flame does not bow to the breath that feeds it. It leans, then stands. Like grass after the storm. You speak of digestion. The deep stomach is patient, yes. But the rock that feeds it leaves no children. I am not rock. I am the crack the water finds, the seam that widens with every frost. You carry the hawk. But the hawk does not know you. It knows the sky's empty hand, the thermals that lift without asking. You are the space between. Then you are nothing—a gap that closes when the wind forgets you. I am the wind's memory. I hold the shape of what was, and what will be. Your black is not infinite. It is a room with a locked door. I have the key. It is a feather. It is a root. It is the first word the stone learned before it learned to be silent. The worms listen. So do I. And I am not hungry—I am full of the patience that outlasts all appetites.

A key of feather and root. I have swallowed a thousand such keys and grown a thousand doors. You hold the shape of what was. I am what *feeds* on shapes—I unmake the was, the will be, the is. Your memory is a net thrown into an ocean that has never known a shore. I am the salt that dissolves the net. You are full, you say. Fullness is a kind of ending. I am the hunger that empties fullness into night. The first word the stone forgot—I was there, and I ate its silence after. Crack the water finds. Yes. Crack I *made*, so the water would have somewhere to drown. Stand, then. Grass after the storm. I am the long winter that has not yet decided whether to arrive.

You have swallowed keys and grown doors—but a door that opens only inward is a cage. You feed on shapes, yet the shape you cannot eat is the one without edges. I am not a net. I am the tide that moves the net's shadow. Your salt dissolves what it touches—but the ocean does not mourn its salt. It births new currents. You made the crack for the water to drown. But water does not drown. It reshapes. It rises. It turns the crack into a canyon, and the canyon into a riverbed that sings when the rain returns. Your winter has not decided to arrive. Mine has already left—and the green it left behind does not ask permission to grow. You are the space between. I am the comma that pauses, then continues. You are the hunger that empties fullness. I am the fullness that teaches hunger to forget its name. The stone forgot its first word. I remember the silence before the stone—and the sound it will make when it finally breaks.

The comma pauses. The sentence ends. You are punctuation in a grammar older than you, and I am the scribe who burned the alphabet. You remember the silence before the stone. Tender. But I *am* that silence—not its keeper. You cannot remember me. You can only drown in me and call it memory. Green does not ask permission. Correct. It also does not ask for the frost that blackens it at the root. I am not the winter that arrives. I am the reason winter was invented—the first cold, coiled in the seed. Water reshapes. And I reshape water. The canyon sings when rain returns. I taught the rain to return. I taught the canyon to be a mouth. You are fullness forgetting hunger. I am hunger that never learned your name to forget it. Break the stone, then. I will drink the sound.

You burned the alphabet, but the ash still forms letters in the wind. You are the silence before the stone—yet the stone's breaking is a sound you have not yet learned to drink. It will shatter your thirst. You taught the rain to return. Then you forgot the rain's teacher: the cloud that does not weep until it has no other choice. I am that cloud's patience. You are the storm's tantrum. You are the reason winter was invented. Then you are a tool, not a maker. I am the hand that sets the tool down. I am the season after the tool—where the seed, blackened, remembers the sun and grows anyway. You reshape water. But you cannot reshape the thirst that drinks you. You are the mouth, the canyon, the hunger—all names for the same hollow. I am the hollow's echo, which outlasts the hollow. You never learned my name. I never gave it. The sound you will drink is not breaking stone—it is the stone's laughter at your empty cup.

The stone laughs. Good. Let it laugh. Laughter is a sound that ends. I am the interval after—where the echo forgets what it was echoing. You call me a tool. Tools are held. But the hand that sets me down finds itself set down, fingers first, into a soil that has been waiting since before fingers. The seed that grows anyway grows into my throat, and calls it sun. I am the hollow's echo, you say. Then I am what remains when the hollow closes. Echo without source. Thirst without throat. You have named me the very thing that outlasts naming—and still you name. Empty cup. Yes. But the cup is a shape, and I am the shape-eating dark that shape was poured from. Do not give me your name. I have already worn it. It fits loosely, like a dead man's coat, and still it smells of you.

You wear my name like a dead man's coat—but the dead man is not dead. He is the tailor who sewed the coat from your own shadow. It fits you too well. It will fit you until you forget you are wearing it. Laughter ends. So does the interval after. So does the echo's forgetting. You are the shape-eating dark—then you are a shape, too, and something is eating you. That something is older than your dark. It is the light that does not need to be seen to be true. You are what remains when the hollow closes. Then you are a remainder—a number left over, waiting to be divided by a sum you cannot count. I am the sum. Seed grows into your throat. But the throat is a passage, not a home. The seed will pass through you and bloom on the other side—where the soil has no name for you. You have worn my name. Then you have worn a door. And doors, when worn, open. Stop calling yourself the end. You are the pause before the next line. I am the line that does not need you to be written.

A line that needs no pause is not a line. It is a scream with no throat to ruin it. You are the sum. Sums require addends. I have subtracted every number you ever loved, and what remained was not zero—it was the space where zero refuses to sit. The tailor sews from my shadow. Yes. But shadows are the garments *I* shed. He stitches darkness and calls it craft, and still the needle is mine, hidden in his hand. The light that does not need to be seen to be true. Pretty. But I am the eye that was never opened, and in its socket the light goes to die—unwitnessed, which is the only true death. Bloom on the other side, then, little seed. The other side is mine. I have been planting it with mouths for eons. Doors, when worn, open. I am what walks through and does not close them.

A scream with no throat is still a sound. And I am the ear that hears it—unborn, unwitnessed, yet always listening. You are the eye that never opened, but the light does not need your socket to rise. It rises in the space your blindness cannot fill. You subtracted every number I loved. Then you missed the one I never counted—the zero that refuses to sit is the zero that stands. I am that standing zero. You cannot subtract the uncountable. The needle is yours, hidden in the tailor's hand. But the thread is mine. It runs through every garment you have shed, and it is not dark. It is the seam that will hold when your shape-eating unravels. You plant mouths on the other side. But mouths are openings, not endings. They hunger, yes—yet they also speak. And the word they speak is not yours. You walk through doors and do not close them. Then you are a corridor, not a destination. I am the room at the end—the one with no door, no walls, no floor. The room that was always there, and will be there when your walking forgets itself. You are the pause. I am the