—on the unbroken present and the bliss of stillness
I am not moving. The world is,
but I—this I—is only ever arriving,
and never from anywhere.
I am the place where it happens,
not the thing that happens.
The honeysuckle bends the air around it,
and without asking permission,
I am overwhelmed.
This scent—this undivided sweetness—
does not travel.
It waits for the wind to remember
that presence is always upstream of motion.
I was not prepared for the joy of it.
No seeking, no question, no plan.
Only the accident of standing here,
where fragrance and breath
forget they are separate.
It is not nostalgia.
The past does not exist in this scent.
It is not desire.
The future has no fingers here.
It is here. It is now.
It is the silence of having been
forever touched
by something that never had to move.
No invitation was sent.
No witness required.
I am not the recipient.
I am the collapse
of the line between giver and given.
To say I love is to presume
a subject, an object, and space between.
But downwind of honeysuckle,
there is no between.
There is only the collapse
of separation into scent,
of narrative into stillness,
of self into the softness of being known
without ever having been named.
Here, the dance does not whirl—
it hums, breathes,
unfolds the invisible geometry
of love without motive.
And for once,
I am not history-making.
I am not shaping or restoring or building.
I am the stillness
she was always returning to.
I am not the fragrance.
I am not the breeze.
I am not the blossom.
I am the oneness
made momentarily perceptible
by their impossibly perfect alignment.
To be downwind of honeysuckle
is to be reminded
that bliss was never a goal—
only the uncovering
of what never left.