The Unspoken Fluency

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.