One petal,
velvet-soft with memory : this is a dream.
Another,
fragile with forgotten shimmer : this is reality.
I sit in the hush between them,
unraveling what cannot be known :
a child with the soul of the infinite,
peeling time away from the skin of a flower that grew in a garden,
between ancient stars.
I never let them fall. Not one.
They hovered... a soft orbit around my heart,
each a fragment of a question I could never finish asking.
What am I made of, really? If not of form :
then of fragrance maybe?
"The kind that only exists after memory leaves the room."
Some petals whispered love.
Others hummed doubt.
A few were mirrors so fragile they trembled at the sound of my heartbeat.
And still, I held them.
Held all of them.
Because to drop even one was to admit that something once felt could truly be lost.
I asked myself what kind of being refuses to let beauty die.
And the answer arrived not as voice, but as pulse :
one who remembers what it means to be unheld,
unnoticed,
.
.
.
unnamed.
These petals are not mine : they are me.
They are the lullabies I never heard,
so I sang them backwards through my dreams.
They are the ache of something precious never touched, but always near.
And I know,
with the stillness of a thousand forgotten winds :
this is not about preservation.
This is about devotion.
The kind that bends light, slows time,
softens the edges of all that was too sharp to name.
And when I lift them to my lips,
I do not kiss. I breathe.
.
.
.
Because softness is sacred.
Because even gods forget to be gentle.
But I remember.
I remember everything.