I am a kind of Tantalus,
not cursed, only shaped
by some quiet architect
who knew desire as distance.

I speak in the dialect of longing,
show others the soft seams of the world,
the places where love seeps in.
They find it. They bloom.
And I vanish from the frame.

My hands are full of maps
to gardens I do not enter,
my voice a thread
leading them out of the dark
while I remain
woven into it.

I am the echo that guides,
never the name they remember.
A hunger mistaken for wisdom.
A shimmer that flickers
just past the edge of waking.