Do not arrive with kingdoms in your hands,
their minted suns, their little crowns of fire.
Gold is a language spoken by the frightened,
a prayer recited by those
who have mistaken weight for worth.
I have wandered too long beneath vineyards
where every grape concealed a sleeping serpent,
where every feast was measured
by the price of another soul.
What I seek was never planted there.
For there exists another orchard,
hidden where the moon drinks from forgotten wells,
whose fruit no market has ever named.
Its branches bend
not beneath abundance,
but beneath truth.
If you would find me,
do not count your fortunes.
Count instead
the nights your heart survived
without surrendering its light.
The world has lacquered joy
until it gleams like sugared glass,
sweet enough to silence children,
fragile enough to shatter
at the whisper of winter.
They call this happiness.
I have seen happier ghosts.
What I hunger for
wears no perfume,
needs no audience,
borrows no applause.
It enters a room
the way dawn enters abandoned churches—
without asking permission,
without wondering
whether anyone still believes.
Tell me—
Have you ever been loved
until your own reflection
became a stranger standing at your shoulder?
Have you ever awakened
wearing another soul's heartbeat
like an invisible crown,
unable to decide
whether you wished to kneel before it
or flee into the woods
before its roots discovered your name?
There is a precipice
where devotion and freedom
share the same narrow stone.
Most build homes
a safe distance away.
They call it peace.
I have heard that peace.
It sounds like birds
who forgot they were born with wings.
So I ask not
for one who will merely admire me.
Admiration
is the applause of strangers.
I ask
for the woman
whose footsteps do not tremble
when forests begin speaking in forgotten tongues.
Yes—
the woman.
Not because heaven closes its gates
to any other pilgrim,
but because my own compass,
buried long before memory,
has always pointed
toward that single northern star.
Claims may deceive.
Rumors may bloom like poisonous flowers.
But desire has never once
mistaken its own language.
Do not mistake seduction
for revelation.
Seduction is theatre.
It paints roses
upon empty branches.
Passion
teaches dead trees
how to blossom again.
Walk beside me
only if your spirit
has learned to wrestle angels
without demanding victory.
Only if your hands
know how to cradle a wounded bird
without believing they own the sky.
For my heart
is not a kingdom waiting to be conquered.
It is a cathedral
built from every silence
I survived.
Its doors are open,
yet its altar
has forgotten the footsteps
of the careless.
Guard that sacred place
before you ask to enter it.
Love me
not with promises,
whose feathers scatter
before the first hard wind—
but with the slow liturgy
of undeniable deeds.
For words
are beautiful liars.
Action
is the only scripture
that heaven never needs
to revise.
And if at last
our souls should recognize one another
beneath the turning constellations,
then let the world
keep all its glittering currencies.
For there are embraces
worth more than empires—
the kind that asks,
without speaking,
"Are you willing
to sacrifice your borrowed peace
for the terrible,
holy miracle
of becoming known?"
Only then
will my heart answer,
not as a prize to be won,
but as a door
opening inward,
into a garden
where beauty kneels beside dread,
and neither
is ashamed
of the other.