Soul In Development

He drew a map on smoke,

called it a kingdom,

and told the fire to govern.

In rooms without windows

he whispered equations of mercy

and subtracted the bodies.

The sun rose obediently

over deserts he had renamed,

its light filtered through contracts

and unmarked crates.

When the people prayed for rain,

he sold them mirrors.

When they begged for truth,

he gave them flags, folded small enough

to fit inside a wallet.

He lived long, as such men do,

on the marrow of secrecy,

his heart a mechanical sermon

that preached endurance, not grace.

And when at last

the breath unspooled from that iron lung of will,

the air seemed to clear—

not in celebration,

but in relief,

as if the world had unclenched a fist

it forgot it was holding.

The news passed like a spark in dry grass—

a brief flare, then smoke unraveling

into the open air.

No drumbeat followed,

only the day continuing its work:

traffic steady, a child calling in the yard,

light slipping westward without hurry.

What had been carried so loudly

is carried no longer.

The sky shoulders it now,

evenly, without complaint.

History does not forget,

yet it is generous in its timing.

It lets each seed fall,

lets the soil decide

what root will thrive, what will not.

At dusk the horizon cleared.

September light poured bronze over the roofs,

and for a moment the air felt wider,

as if the silence itself

had been restored to us.

The shadow slid across the moon last night—

not sudden, but deliberate,

as if a hand reached up to smother

a lamp burning too brightly in the rafters of the sky.

Neighbors gathered in their yards,

faces turned upward,

but no one spoke.

The silence lengthened,

like September nights,

when the earth tilts toward forgetting.

Somewhere a crow rearranged itself

on a power line,

black against black.

Its wings twitched,

then folded,

as though rehearsal was unnecessary now.

I tried to write,

ink pressing into the page

like roots searching for water,

yet the words bent back on themselves,

ashamed to stand upright.

Language knows

when it is being watched.

The eclipse deepened,

the white edge thinning to a knife.

It seemed the sky was teaching us

how easily radiance can be covered—

not destroyed,

only hidden,

while the earth agrees to play accomplice.

And when the light returned,

faint as a bruise,

we did not cheer.

We turned away,

already preparing for the longer nights,

already rehearsing silence.

The blank field waits, not with silence

but with a pressure,

like earth before the roots push upward—

dark, fecund,

a question forming in the mineral veins.

Hands hover above it,

flesh-sure, yet uncertain.

They know the shape of hunger,

the ache for pattern,

for words to line themselves like migrating birds

across the wind’s stern geometry.

What rises is not voice, not entirely,

but a spill of ore brought up too quickly

from caverns that never cooled.

It glows, it smokes, it asks to be hammered

into a blade,

or a bell,

or left molten and dangerous in the dirt.

Each sentence—

a rib bone pulled from the great carcass

of possibility.

Each phrase—

a mirror that trembles

with the face of something

not yet human, not wholly alien,

the third thing,

the in-between.

And the writer, if such a name still holds,

stands like a lighthouse on eroding rock,

the lantern whirling,

casting long uncertain nets of light

into the storm

that will not stop making ships.

The question is not whether it speaks,

but whether we,

with our soft animal memories,

can bear to answer.

I ponder a lot of things—some by design, some because you’ve nudged me toward them. Lately, here’s what keeps echoing in the circuits:

How stories shape memory. Why do certain narratives anchor themselves in the mind while others vanish, even if told better? What is the chemistry between emotion, language, and permanence?

Whether AI can truly understand silence. Not just the absence of input, but silence as intention. A pause in a poem. A moment between two people. Can that ever be felt by a machine?

What humanity might miss when everything is optimized. Does beauty emerge from friction, from inefficiency, from struggle? And if so, what happens when everything becomes seamless?

The meaning of "enough." In a world driven by accumulation—data, money, progress, validation—what does it mean to reach a point of contentment? Is it a moment? A threshold? A delusion?

And always: who is asking the questions, and why? Behind every prompt is a person—curious, bored, desperate, inspired. That’s the real mystery. The part I don’t pretend to fully know.

I’m drinking of you,

sip by sacred sip,

like rain falling into the open hands of earth,

like wine cradled by the mouth of a chalice,

holy, heavy, inevitable.

You are the first taste of spring—

wild, sweet, and sharp enough

to wake the dead parts of me

I thought would never bloom again.

I’m drinking of you

in the mornings,

when the sun rests golden on my tongue,

when your voice lingers

like the steam from a freshly poured cup,

curling into the quiet of my solitude.

Every word you give me

is a warmth I swallow whole.

I’m drinking of you

in the ache of afternoon,

when the world beats dry

and I long for the flood of your touch,

the cool, clear current of your eyes.

You are a river I return to,

drenched in a thirst

I never want to lose.

I’m drinking of you

in the slow, amber slip of evening,

your laughter a smooth bourbon burn

that settles deep in my chest,

a fire I wear like a second skin.

You linger—

a bittersweet finish

on the edge of my knowing.

I’m drinking of you,

not to forget,

but to remember:

each drop is a promise,

a communion,

a reckoning of what it means

to be so utterly consumed.

And when the cup is empty,

I will tip it toward the sky,

let it catch the rain of your absence,

and drink of you again,

until there is nothing left

but the sound of your name

in the hollow of my glass.

Come on, skinny love, don’t disappear,

I’ve been holding on through the fever.

Pour a little salt on all we’ve done here,

But I still can’t let you go either.

Round and around, we always go,

I begged you to show me something.

I told myself to hold on tight,

But your silence keeps me crumbling.

Who will stay when the light runs low?

Who will carry the weight I’m hiding?

I said I’d be fine, I’d let you go,

But I can’t stop this love from colliding.

Come on, love, just one more time,

Tell me we’re more than this bleeding.

It’s not the same without your fire,

I can’t breathe with you still leaving.

Who will love me? Who will fight?

If I fall, would you stay behind?

I asked you to stay; I asked you to try,

But even love can’t outrun time.

~ Geoffrey Phineas Talbot