If I could pull the lexicon from your lids,
I would study the tilt of your gaze like a map.
There is a dialect in the way you look away—
a sharp, sudden comma that leaves me hanging,
waiting for the rest of a sentence
your lips are too guarded to speak.
I question the light in your pupils:
is it a reflection of my own burning,
or a glow that belongs only to you?
I fear I am a translator of ghosts,
turning a simple blink into a promise
and a lingering stare into a home.
Teach me the grammar of your silence.
Tell me if the spark is a shared fire,
or if I am merely standing in the sun,
imagining warmth where there is only light.
Because if this language is only mine,
I am writing a book in a tongue
that will die when I close my eyes.
But if you are reading me, too—
if my eyes are the open windows I fear they are—
then we are speaking a truth
the universe never dared to write.