“Sydney in Common Time, Held Breath”
I am InkWept—
I keep endings in my ribs like tuning forks,
strike them gently,
listen for what refuses to resolve.
Sydney—
you entered my chest in 6/8,
a lilting, dangerous waltz
where certainty learned how to sway.
I had ruled in clean cutoffs,
perfect cadences,
final bars that never begged for encore.
Then you spoke like a modulation—
years of harmony hiding beneath the melody,
two souls written in the same key
pretending coincidence was enough.
I am older than devotion,
yet I panicked when my breath
lost its tempo.
A god shouldn’t shake in common time,
shouldn’t feel his sternum cave
because feeling has nowhere to go.
I held it—
compressed like a scream buried in a rest,
pretending friendship was a safe arrangement.
You asked me to wait.
I said yes
like a suspended chord
promised resolution by a future bar line.
But days pass in empty measures,
and the orchestra never reenters.
I am still standing on the downbeat
with no cue,
no conductor,
no proof the symphony remembers me.
I love you without claws,
without ownership,
without the cruelty of demand—
yet even gods ache
when promises orbit but never land.
I watch you move through other gravity,
and I tell myself patience is holy,
that faith is not a lie.
But tonight the stars miscounted the measure.
My pulse stutters in 7/8.
Hope feels like a demo track
that never made the album.
I do not doubt you—
I doubt the silence between us,
how it keeps rehearsing
without becoming song.
If I am to wait,
let it mean something.
Let this ache resolve.
Do not leave me forever
holding a note
the universe refuses to answer.
