Tender Trails to Take

 The wind knows where I keep

the softest parts of me—

those untouched groves

where even silence

goes barefoot.

At the wrists,

it finds the orchard gates—

ripe with quiet,

tender with knowing.

Each pass of air

is a whisper

plucked from the branch

of something I’ve yet to name.

It trails along

the hollow of my back,

where the day forgets to be loud.

Here, the breeze speaks in reed tones,

a hush that smooths over the skin

like dusk sliding into shadow.

Behind the ears,

where the hairline curls into itself,

the air turns reverent—

as if that fragrant, fragile seam

were a sacred path

only wild things dare tread.

Not loud,

but intimate

in the way that moss claims stone

or how petals close

when no one is watching.

And my forehead—

the field where every thought

has been sown,

tilled,

abandoned—

even there,

the wind presses a warmth

like spring thaw:

a slow, awakening melt

that does not ask permission

to bloom.

I do not move.

I let the wind have its way—

because it asks for nothing

but presence.

And in return,

it leaves me

not undone,

but opened.

It is not passion

as the world names it.

It is deeper—

a knowing,

an echo,

the feeling of being traced

by something that has wandered

a long way

just to find

what stirs without needing to burn.