The Understanding
The sideways motion carried no friction.
It was the speed of a thought
travelling through a mind
that had stopped resisting.
Beside me, your silhouette remained a fixed absence,
a perfect hollow in the rushing dark.
I wanted to reach inside that hollow.
I wanted to pull a name from it,
a history,
a logic that could explain
why my feet had found your wood,
why my breath had crystallized
against your shadow.
The desire left me as heat,
rippling outward
through the silver root systems.
There was no distance left to close,
so you answered
with a sudden change in your density.
The hollow of your shape
pulled at the edges of my intent,
inviting my search.
A wave of profound, ancient fatigue
rolled out from you,
passing directly into the deep chill of my marrow.
It was the weight of a stillness
that had waited for infinity
just to be caught.
You did not want to be understood.
You wanted to be met.
You wanted to cease being a solitary depth
in the empty black.
Our desires coincided,
perfectly mirrored in the dark.
I wanted to know you,
and you wanted to be known
as the space that held me.
The sideways rush slowed.
The open face of the weightless dark
began to curve,
bending inward
until the horizon closed into a perfect circle
around the space we held together.
We had become a single,
dense point of comprehension—
an understanding made of nothing
but the absolute lock of our pressure
against the quiet.
","author_name":"Friedrich Gatzen"}