Under the Gaze

Beneath an amber haze, the ground hums warm,

soft dirt clings like memory,

and cicadas strike a match of sound—

a rhythm too ancient to ignore.

The air thickens with the taste of distance,

the horizon a taut line,

quivering, endless.

A tumbleweed carts its restless dream,

crossing borders no one marked.

Nearby, shadows stretch thin as silk,

their spines twisting on the cusp of noon,

as if they, too, carry stories too fragile to hold.

Then comes the shift, unbidden, sharp—

a sudden stillness sharpens the edge of breath.

Something unseen stirs behind the veil of heat,

a whisper (but not the word you’d expect)—

a notion too tender, too wild to name.

It’s there in the shape of the land,

in how the earth curves

like an old, knowing smile.

The quiet explodes, not with sound,

but the swell of a moment pressing through the skin:

a truth that cannot be pinned,

a yearning to belong to something vast,

yet unseen.

And as the sun dips lower, casting gold into every crevice,

you feel smaller but not lesser—

a speck cradled in something infinite.